


Sea Life of Scarif

by soulshrapnel



Series: Playing With Fire [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: BDSM, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Kink Exploration, M/M, New Relationship Energy, Please Do Not Have Darth Vader As A Houseguest, Space Fascist Disaster Boys, Switching, Tarkin is irrationally concerned about sea monsters, This will probably be less angsty than the last fic, but no promises, unmasking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-04-08 11:52:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 60,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19106536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulshrapnel/pseuds/soulshrapnel
Summary: Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin are in an actual relationship now, but they have yet to come to an agreement on what that means. Tarkin would like to start by taking Vader someplace slightly less ominous than a lava planet and seeing if it's possible for a Dark Lord of the Sith to relax a bit. But Vader doesn't seem interested in relaxing - if anything, his demands are only growing stranger.





	1. Flickerfish

**Author's Note:**

> whoops, I slipped and fell into another trashfic :D

Grand Moff Tarkin prided himself on his ability to focus, and he had, in fact, stayed focused on his work. But it seemed that every second he _hadn't_ spent working, for the past two months, he'd spent thinking about Darth Vader.

At his offices on Coruscant, between meetings, in the short reprieves between one urgent problem and another. On the _Sovereign_ , flitting between different Outer Rim worlds whose local administrators required his attention. In his private chambers, while falling asleep, while waking up. He thought about the way the red-tinged light of Mustafar had glinted off Vader's armor. The way Vader had whirled with his lightsaber through the chaos of his training room. The way the Force felt when Vader used it for pleasure, holding Tarkin's limbs in place, pressing sensation into his body. The way Vader had growled out his real feelings for Tarkin at last, in the dark warmth of the fortress's guest room, with a gloved hand around his throat.

Tarkin was familiar with the concept of new relationship energy, and it seemed he'd contracted a particularly obsessive strain.

It might have helped if everyone around him wasn't thinking about it, too. Tarkin's visit to Mustafar was supposed to have been private. But he'd returned with a very conspicuous leg injury, and everyone had wanted to know what happened. Tarkin knew how to rebuff such inquiries, but a few less-circumspect observers had already put the pieces together, and so a more-or-less accurate version of the story was now circulating through the entirety of the Empire's upper ranks.

_Did you hear that Grand Moff Tarkin and Lord Vader are an item now?_ the rumor went. _That's why he vanished for a few days and came back limping. He was on Mustafar. For "personal reasons."_

_That's ridiculous. Who'd go all the way to Mustafar for sex?_

_Haven't you noticed how they've been vanishing off together during lulls in missions when they think no one's looking? If you want a day or two of very, very private time with Lord Vader, his fortress on Mustafar is exactly where you'd go._

_Eurgh. I heard Lord Vader had been getting around, but I thought Tarkin of all people would be smarter than that. No wonder he came back injured. Who in their right mind looks at a monstrosity like Vader and thinks -_

_Yeah, well, don't let either of_ them _hear you say it._

Tarkin wished he could violently suppress such talk, the way he did with seditious broadcasts. Unfortunately, in this circumstance it would have hurt more than it helped. The rumors would persist, and would metamorphose to: _Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader are an item now, and Tarkin's_ hiding _it._

Vader, of course, might be violently suppressing it anyway. Vader had always been willing to murder his underlings at the slightest provocation. But Tarkin hadn't been able to ask him about it. Since that visit to Mustafar, they had actually barely seen each other.

There'd been one short mission, once Tarkin's leg had healed sufficiently for field work. A trivial mission, not even overnight. There'd been a single, solitary hour in which neither of them were needed for anything else, and they'd crept away and fucked in Vader's quarters. It had been breathless and urgent and particularly masochistic, as Vader hit him with a seemingly endless series of wonderfully awful Force-sensations.

"You cannot expect," Vader had growled, as arcs of power burned their way down Tarkin's body, "that I will be any gentler now, simply because you know I care for you."

"Oh, I expect the opposite," Tarkin had growled back.

They'd agreed that they needed a proper visit, very soon. And then, nothing. Vader had been so busy since that tiny mission that he'd barely returned Tarkin's calls.

Tarkin didn't think Vader was ghosting. Probably. He usually did get a response, a few days delayed and sent by a servant or droid, apologizing for the Dark Lord's continued absence due to matters concerning the security of the Empire. Tarkin had known something like that would happen eventually; he and Vader both had busy schedules which wouldn't always match up.

Still, he found himself holding his breath when the comms panel in his office aboard the _Sovereign_ lit up, showing an incoming transmission from coordinates that could only be Mustafar.

He pressed the key to accept the transmission, and Vader's holographic image appeared in perfect miniature. The dark suit, the glossy black helmet, the cape streaming down behind him.

"Lord Vader," Tarkin said coolly. Just because he'd been waiting for this with literal bated breath didn't mean there was reason to act undignified. "What a pleasant surprise."

"I have been delayed," Vader replied. No greeting; no niceties; straight to the heart of the matter. That was Vader's usual way. "But my mission is finally over. I believe, when we last spoke, we were discussing a visit."

"We were," said Tarkin. "My own schedule is rather formidable, but I believe I can make time. Where were you, by the way? Or is it too classified for me?"

"I was assigned to an investigation in the Unknown Regions with Grand Admiral Thrawn. It was most irritating."

Tarkin frowned slightly.  _Assigned,_ in that passive phrasing, meant assigned by the Emperor.

Palpatine kept a close eye on Vader's personal life. He'd given his blessing to Vader and Tarkin's relationship, but only after testing Vader's loyalty with a convoluted ploy involving a lava monster. It could be coincidence,  but Tarkin could imagine Palpatine intentionally keeping things busy, just to ensure that the situation remained under his control. Modulating the speed at which the relationship could progress.

Palpatine needed to learn to mind his own business.

"Speak to my staff about your schedule," Vader was continuing, "and I will ensure that a room at my fortress is prepared."

Tarkin raised an eyebrow. He had plans of his own for Vader, and returning to Mustafar immediately was not one. He'd inferred some things about the ways that Palpatine kept Vader dependent, and about the effect it had on Vader to be surrounded by gloom and lava all the time. Tarkin thought it would do Vader good to relax somewhere else for a change.

"I'm eager to see you, too," he replied, "but I don't recall agreeing that our next visit would be at your fortress. In fact, I believe I recall the opposite. It's my turn to choose a location."

Vader's head turned; it was hard to tell via hologram, but he looked miffed. "I do not recall agreeing to take turns."

"Not in so many words, but it's standard practice and I feel strongly about it. How would you feel about my beach house on Scarif?"

"I have already told you how I feel about Scarif."

"Yes, you hate it because it's a beach and you don't want to get sand in your life support suit." Tarkin crossed his arms. "We _did_ agree that this wasn't going to be one-sided. If sand is an issue, we'll stay off the sand. I'll consider alternate proposals, but they need to be locations average humans would find pleasant. My extended family owns property on Eriadu which might serve, although that would take more legwork; I don't think you're quite ready to meet them yet. Do you have another suggestion?"

Vader regarded him coolly. His distinctive breath was audible even in hologram form. "You are unwise to open negotiations without choosing an incentive. I will visit you on Scarif if you insist. But in exchange for my indulgence, for our first night on Scarif, you will follow my orders precisely."

Tarkin raised his eyebrows. He should have expected that, while he spent the month planning what he'd do with Vader next, Vader had been making plans of his own. And he should have expected that they'd be kink plans. This wasn't a kind of kink he especially liked. Tarkin liked pain and mind games, and he didn't mind being bound in place, but his feelings about other forms of submission were decidedly mixed. Vader had tried to push Tarkin into them before - tried to make him beg, for example - but without much success.

It was flattering, in a way. Vader hadn't had a romantic relationship in quite some time, and now presumably he wanted to test this one's bounds. If Tarkin played that right, it might become an entertaining mind game of its own.

"I'm not comfortable doing kink negotiation at a distance," he replied levelly. "And I certainly won't blanket agree to a request like that. How about this. You'll visit me on Scarif, and we'll have a longer talk about our interests and preferences when you get there. If you have some fantasy that involves me taking orders, and it seems congruent with our discussion, then I'll try it. But we can stop before the night is up if we aren't enjoying ourselves. And all the other usual rules as to safewords and limits still apply. Agreed?"

"Those are poor terms," said Vader. "They allow you to end your side of the agreement immediately. So, if I am to agree to them, I require the same. If I am not enjoying Scarif, I will leave."

"Agreed," said Tarkin immediately, because he recognized that for the empty threat it was. After over a month going without, Vader wasn't going to cut a date short. Not for petty landscape-related reasons, at least. "I assume I'll install a meditation chamber for you, as with your quarters aboard ship. Do you require any other accommodations? For a stay of, say, two nights?"

"A meditation chamber will be sufficient," said Vader. "See to it, and send your schedule. I will see you. Soon."

"Soon," Tarkin echoed, with a sharp smile, and the transmission winked out.

Putting aside the file he'd been working on - something about the Outer Rim's trade routes, which would always be a mess no matter what anyone did - he keyed into his scheduling program and assigned priorities to his obligations of the next few weeks based on how easily they could be cancelled or rescheduled, from "very easy" to "impossible." He then sent that file and a brief explanation along to an aide, who would do the grunt work of coordinating with one of Vader's servants to pick a precise date that caused the fewest number of headaches for everyone involved. That done, he called up a list of the technicians who were capable of constructing one of Vader's meditation chambers on short notice, and started the process of narrowing it down.

Last minute property renovations were not Tarkin's favorite thing, but it could be worse. He preferred it, for example, to another lava monster. At the very least, there wouldn't be any lava monsters on Scarif.

Not that the lack of lava would stop Palpatine from interfering if he wanted to. Palpatine knew how to make do with whatever was at hand. If there was no lava on Scarif from which to summon a lava monster, there was still - at very minimum - the sea. There could be sea monsters. Why hadn't he thought of that before?

Scarif's sea was safe, by the standards of planetary oceans. Shallow, clear, dotted by balmy islands and reefs. Tarkin had waded in that sea plenty of times, even led children through it. The only sea life he'd ever encountered had been harmless. Multicolored fish, clawless crustaceans. No world was ever born that safe, but Scarif had been thoroughly tamed. If there were any dangerous sea monsters left, they lived far out in the deeps, unconcerned with the existence of humans above them.

Probably.

Growing up on Eriadu, even before he joined the military as such, Tarkin had learned the importance of discipline and preparation. One couldn't simply walk out one's door on that stormy jungle world and expect to be safe. He'd learned that early, learned the wild forest's hazards and the correct way of surmounting each one. But perhaps in the intervening years, growing accustomed to more orderly climes, he had let those habits lapse. He'd trusted the thing Scarif appeared to be, instead of properly assessing its risks.

It was time, perhaps, to visit the Imperial Library.

*

**_Flickerfish._ ** _This small fish, with its brilliantly colored scales, lives amid Scarif's coral reefs. In its native habitat, unlikely as it may seem, the colors serve as camouflage. Each species of flickerfish is adapted to match the hue of a specific coral. It spends most of its time hiding amid this coral's crevices, observing its environment with its large eyes. The keen vision that the flickerfish possesses allows it to quickly detect any predator - or an opportunity to eat. Pictured here are the blue, scarlet, and golden flickerfish._

*

The Library was a massive tower reaching all the way from Coruscant's ground level to its sky, divided by category into five or six separate vertical tubes of varying diameter, all encompassing its full height, all lined with shelves of holobooks and other miscellaneous media. Despite the name, it was usually open to the public. Patrons entered at certain levels and were shepherded onto floating platforms, which zipped up and down or around the tower's interior edge; smaller automated tools, which could retrieve a holobook remotely, moved in the same way. Tarkin strode in at the highest entrance, flanked by his guards. The librarian - a chubby Besalisk in a smart skirtsuit - stood up at once from her desk, startled.

"Grand Moff Tarkin," she greeted him, inclining her head nervously. Tarkin had no particular authority over this library, but he was sufficiently high-ranking to make everything miserable for her anyway, if he felt like it. "To what do I owe the honor?"

"Nothing official. I'm just looking for a holobook. Do you have anything accessible for laypeople about the marine biology of the Abrion sector? Particularly Scarif."

The librarian gave a low whistle. Scarif was obscure, and access to its surface required a significant security clearance. The chances of the book Tarkin wanted existing were low. The chances of it existing here on Coruscant, far from the Abrion sector, were lower. Tarkin had known that, but it was worth a try.

"I'll see what I can do," she said, keying a few commands into the cataloguing system at her desk. She typed with all four of her hands at once. "If we have anything like that, it'd be in the - Oh. Here."

She pressed a key. One of the automated devices zipped out from behind her desk and began spiraling down the walls, far enough that Tarkin lost sight of it amid the general visual noise. The library's floor was barely visible from here, a speck far below them more intuited than seen.

"Just some light reading?" the librarian inquired.

Tarkin glanced at her sidelong. There was an odd, anxious tone in her voice. Not prying, he guessed. Just concerned about what he'd do if the book did not, in fact, meet his specifications.

"Something like that," he said. "I'll be spending some time at a property there, and I'd like to have an answer for once if a guest asks which fish is which." A true statement and a lie, delivered without guilt, since it was none of the librarian's business anyway.

"Ah, here it is," said the librarian. The moving tool zipped back up behind her desk and deposited the holobook in her hand. She offered it to him, front cover up. "Will this do?"

_Sea Life of Scarif,_ it said. The cover was designed in a blocky style that had been popular perhaps fifteen years ago. So this dated from before Scarif had been commandeered for research and development, but not too many years before; the Empire had already, barely, existed. It appeared to be part of a series, each lovingly describing the wildlife of a different world. He flipped it over and skimmed the back cover copy; it seemed simple enough for a general audience, but not simplistic enough to be insulting.

"Perfectly, thank you," said Tarkin.

He began impatiently flipping through it as soon as he was seated back in his airspeeder, headed back towards his governor's office. He did not look up for some time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you imagine the marine biology interludes being read aloud by Space David Attenborough then that's... pretty much what I was going for :D
> 
> I think I am finally starting to get the hang of Looking Things Up In The Wookieepedia which means that it's getting easier to find the names of stuff like spaceships and sectors, etc. This does not mean my fic is necessarily going to get any more accurate. As ever, I don't know what I'm doing, aside from feeding a bunch of hungry little plot bunnies.
> 
> Comments are love <3


	2. Caped Morogast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vader arrives on Scarif and is unimpressed.

Darth Vader looked down skeptically at the blue-green islands of Scarif as his shuttle angled down through perfect white wisps of cloud. He wanted this visit very much. He wanted _Tarkin_ very much. But the planet itself seemed... silly.

Vader knew he couldn't always dictate the location for visits. But his fortress on Mustafar was where he kept his bacta tank, a safe resting place too cumbersome to install on a spaceship, and he had badly wanted to sleep in that tank a few more days. His mission had kept him away from it several weeks longer than medically recommended, and by the end of it, he'd been exhibiting odd and ominous physical symptoms. A week's rest at home and some extra medications had resolved those, but he still felt tired.

He could have mentioned that to Tarkin. He could have demanded that, if Vader was to stay overnight at a beach house, then it must be fitted with an equivalent tank and all its accessories: a pressurized room, a pair of Royal Guards, various specialized life support machines. He could have demanded to bring his personal medical droid. But Vader had not asked. He had his pride.

The planet's shield shimmered above them as the shuttle descended. Vader had taken the _Executor_  into orbit, followed by his usual _Lambda_ -class shuttle to the planet itself. On Mustafar, Tarkin had arrived in a civilian shuttle for some reason, perhaps trying to be inconspicuous. But Vader would always be conspicuous no matter what he did, and civilians weren't allowed on Scarif anyway.

Nobody who worked for Vader was allowed to ask what he was doing on Scarif. Unquestioning, efficient obedience was Vader's preference, and he'd demanded it on missions far stranger than this. But he could tell - he could _feel_ \- that most of the crew had guessed why. He could choke anyone foolish enough to mention it, but he couldn't do much about the private amusement, titillation, or disgust of men who were outwardly doing their jobs with respect.

Vader thought he'd been better than this at keeping relationships secret, but he was clearly out of practice.

"It'll just be a little bit longer, my lord," said his pilot, a generic officer who looked like most of the other officers. Vader had already forgotten his exact name and rank; he had picked him out of the _Executor_ 's available pilots only because his feelings at this juncture were the least obnoxious. He was a little afraid of Vader, but his reaction to having to go to Scarif had been a genuinely indifferent mental shrug. "The coordinates you gave are on the planet's far side, and since there's only one opening in the planetary shield-"

"I am aware," said Vader, silencing him.

The elegant towers of the security complex fell away. They flew over a couple of larger islands bearing the circular scars of mining operations. To the side, the archipelago trailed off into a telltale dark, rocky, smoky shape. _Volcanic_ islands, hah. Vader would have to rub that one in Tarkin's face.

Past that archipelago, they crossed the terminator line, the shuttle abruptly falling into night. On Tarkin's part of the planet, it would be just past suppertime now, and Vader had loaded his own nutrient packs accordingly. Scarif looked a little bit less silly by night, but something about it still resembled a holo-card. Clear starry skies, twinkling through the aurora-like glimmer of the planetary shield; calm warm water and islands which at first looked untouched, though in fact most parts of Scarif had been carefully scoured of anything that could threaten Imperial operations. Here and there patches of bioluminescence sparkled in the shallow seas, or the sandy banks of reefs poked up through the waves. The whole thing felt somehow dishonest, a landscape designed for permanent tourists, scrubbed clean of any sign of the rage and fear and filth that always followed where sentient beings set foot.

"Making our final descent, my lord," said the pilot.

Vader looked out the window, impatient. This planet might be silly, but he was intent on seeing Tarkin. He felt _hungry_ for it. These last two months, he'd been thinking about Tarkin incessantly.

Vader had believed, for a long time, that he could not love. Perhaps he still couldn't; he _had_ been very much in love once, and this didn't quite feel like the same thing. But Vader had blurted out angrily, on Mustafar, that he cared for Tarkin, and in that moment he'd known it was true. The attachment he felt might not have an easy name, but it was real, and it was more than sex.

Over the years, several people had made him feel like this. Not just Tarkin. Submissives who somehow excessively delighted him, who he thought about too much, who he wanted to see all the time. But when Vader started to care for someone, a wall came down. Death-visions, nightmares, terror of harming them. Even inured to death and fear as Vader was, he had not liked that. Each time it happened, before he could even acknowledge to himself what it meant, through rudeness or violence or simple refusal to see them again, he'd pushed each person away.

That wall had come down for Tarkin, too. But Tarkin was so clever, and he knew Vader so well. Somehow, Tarkin had worked out what to do. He'd  called each one of Vader's bluffs. Refused to be pushed. Refused to run, even when ordered to. Tarkin had seen the wall and deftly maneuvered around it. After the lava monster incident, he'd even somehow gotten Palpatine's approval. Tarkin was not Force-sensitive, but he seemed to have powers that Vader did not understand.

So, now, in spite of everything, they were in a relationship. At least until Tarkin changed his mind.

The shuttle came to rest on a small island much like the others. Palm trees waved their branches in a gentle night breeze. The sea lapped slowly at a sandy inlet, leading to a single moderately-sized, modernist home. It had gray walls and a flat roof, with the obligatory Imperial insignia over the door, but the stern effect was softened by huge windows and a large, lazy-looking patio: in the direction that faced the sea, a whole wall had been replaced by glass, bringing the sight of the ocean directly to whoever lounged there.

A walkway of polished stone led from the shuttle's landing area to the beach house's entrance, and similar paths rambled out in other directions over the island. Tarkin's promise about staying off the sand had been correct, then. Vader hadn't been entirely serious about that, but he liked how Tarkin attended to details.

Tarkin stood out in front of the house: alone, at ease, hands clasped behind his back, watching Vader's shuttle with his usual sharp focus. He was out of uniform, as he'd been on Mustafar, wearing a light tunic and slacks, with a small blaster holstered at his side. The blaster was new; on Mustafar, he'd come unarmed. Vader drank in the sight of him, straight and alert, the complex feel of his mind behind the cool facade. There was a hunger in Tarkin's mind nearly identical to Vader's, and the sight of each other sharpened it. They'd been apart too long.

Ah, but Vader couldn't do anything about that yet. The shuttle's crew was watching. On Mustafar, Vader had Force-pushed Tarkin to the groind and taken him roughly before he even made it indoors. But he couldn't do that this time, even once the shuttle left. Tarkin had made him promise they'd talk first. Vader now regretted that promise.

He strode down the shuttle's ramp, flanked by a floating droid that carried a small black box of personal supplies. He didn't slow until he stood right in front of Tarkin.

Tarkin nodded crisply. Putting on more of a show of indifference than usual, for the sake of the shuttle's crew, knowing Vader would not be fooled. "Lord Vader. Your quarters are prepared for you; would you like to ensure everything is in order before your shuttle is dismissed?"

"There is no need," said Vader. From long experience, he trusted Tarkin to oversee a meditation chamber's installation correctly. The times when he'd encountered problems had been the fault of other, more careless officials. If he did discover a problem, he could always call the shuttle back down.

"Very good, then."

Behind him, he heard the shuttle retracting its ramp, launching back into Scarif's clear blue sky.

Vader waited until it was out of sight, feeling Tarkin's mental tension as he waited for the same thing. Then he extended a hand and cradled Tarkin's face in his gloved palm, running his thumb gently upwards to brush the corner of his mouth.

"You are not fooling any of them," he murmured. "They all know."

Tarkin reached up, and his hand met Vader's forearm, holding it loosely. It was only recently that they'd begun to touch each other physically, as opposed to just using the Force. Vader didn't do that with most people, but Tarkin wasn't most people, and he seemed to enjoy it a great deal.

"They would have found out eventually no matter what we did," said Tarkin. "But I'd still like to maintain some dignity when we're in front of people; it makes command easier."

"These are my own men. They fear me and obey without question. I could have stripped you here before them and done obscenities to you, and none would have dared to speak a word of complaint."

Tarkin's eyes narrowed. "Not to your face, at least. Perhaps to mine. Did you really commandeer an entire Super Star Destroyer just to ferry you here?"

"I did not commandeer it. It is mine."

"You are utterly ridiculous." Tarkin broke away, turning toward the beach house. "Let's get inside. A bit more privacy wouldn't go amiss."

*

**_Caped Morogast._ ** _This sizable cephalopod lives near the floor of Scarif's shallow oceans, preying on smaller fish and invertebrates. Named for the membrane that stretches between its limbs, when a large specimen swims overhead, it can blot out the sunlight, casting the sea floor into brief night. Despite its fearsome looks, the caped morogast is harmless to humans - but that's not much consolation to its prey._

*

Vader felt comfortable in his fortress and in similar areas of Imperial grandeur, which were designed to make most visitors as uncomfortable as possible. Something felt right to him about spaces like that, an accurate architectural depiction of the horrors within. He felt comfortable in the more spartan confines of spaceships, useful tools stripped down to their utility. He even felt comfortable in places of squalor and poverty; those had been home to him once, from a very young age, and he understood their rules.

He felt profoundly uncomfortable in Tarkin's beach house.

The rooms Tarkin led him through were spacious, brightly lit, comfortable. An open-concept living room, bordered by the wall of glass that faced out on the sea, with low blue-gray couches and a holo and gaming table. A large kitchen, too spare and clean to be in frequent use. A stairway leading to a tidy upper floor of bedrooms, each with its own large windows onto the placid sea. This was a house clearly built for relaxation, belonging to a tyrant who was never known to relax. A vacation property for a man too in love with his work to take vacations. A house big enough for several small families at once, or a medium-large extended one, when Vader was fairly sure Tarkin _had_ no family but the one on Eriadu that had birthed him.

It seemed... wrong. Wasteful.

The room with the meditation chamber was there, though: a large room that looked like it had been a bedroom until recently, with a wooden dresser and closet, a shelf of holobooks, and its own small private fresher. In pride of place, where a king-sized bed might have been, instead stood one of the irregular, polished black spheres in which it was possible for Vader to rest.

Vader Force-pressed a few buttons and watched the chamber open and shut, displaying its interior. He felt as out of place as this machine looked, an ominous black bulk in the midst of lightness and ease. Everything appeared to be in order, though. Tarkin had remembered the other niceties that unspokenly accompanied such chambers: a discreet box atop the dresser held forty-eight hours' worth of the assortment of medicines, fluids, and nutrients that Vader would typically require. His droid had brought a small addition to that collection, the tail end of the extra treatments Vader had needed while recovering from his month with Thrawn. It placed that box beside the existing one, then floated to a corner and quietly powered down.

"This is acceptable," said Vader.

"That's good to know. I was half afraid the house's girders wouldn't handle its weight, but I've been assured it's fine."

"I would not wish to destroy this building." Vader refocused on Tarkin. "Though surely most of what you have here is for show. I have never seen you take a vacation, apart from now and when you came to Mustafar. How often is this building actually used?"

Tarkin's lip curled slightly, suppressing some private amusement. Vader recalled he'd had similar questions, in the other direction, about the guest rooms at Fortress Vader. "You aren't constantly apprised of what I'm doing every day, Vader. I've taken vacations without you noticing. Not often, though. More often I invite a few officials and their families here to discuss some political topic informally, or as a reward. Or I let my extended family borrow it. It's flexible."

When officials were sent to Mustafar to discuss something, the idea was to make them pliable through fear. Tarkin seemed to be describing the reverse: persuasion through comfort. Vader was not versed in that technique. He supposed he could imagine Tarkin doling out rewards like this carefully, in measured amounts. Keeping his sharp gaze on the people who enjoyed them, making them wonder what would happen if they proved unworthy.

Vader did not even _like_ this beach house, but Vader wanted to be worthy, too.

"What is it that you enjoy about this planet?" he needled, distracting himself. "Is it only the lack of lava?"

"It's a pleasant environment generally. And a very-much-desired one, given Scarif's security measures; it's social currency. I admit the lack of lava does help."

"These islands are volcanic in origin. I passed one still smoking on the way here. None of this idyllic land would be here if not for the planet's molten core."

Tarkin smirked. "Yes, but the point is, there isn't lava _here._ All the volcanoes anywhere close to this island are extinct. Which leaves room for mere mortals to enjoy themselves outdoors without burning to death if they step wrong. I'll show you around the island tomorrow when it's lighter out; you'll like it, I think, once you're accustomed to the atmosphere. I imagine it is different from your usual."

Vader shifted, letting himself turn fully towards Tarkin. The meditation chamber took up most of the room, and other bits of furniture, such as the dresser and shelves, made the remaining areas somewhat narrow. Tarkin occupied an awkward corner now, between Vader and the chamber and two adjoining walls. One of the walls held a small panel, probably for a home security system or the like. The other, directly behind him, was blank. The space was large enough not to be claustrophobic; Tarkin could move around in it a bit. But to exit the room, he'd have to push past Vader's bulk, and Vader would have to choose to allow it.

 "On the topic of things that are different from usual," Vader said. "I promised you we would have a discussion now."

Tarkin looked up at him, pleased. If he'd noticed how confined he currently was, then it didn't seem to bother him. "You did. You wanted me to take orders tonight, and I said we'd have to discuss it further. I'm not at all opposed to trying new things, I just wanted to be clearer about you meant, and that seemed like the sort of talk we ought to have in person."

"Why would you be reluctant to take orders? Everything we have done has already been an exercise in subsuming your will to mine."

"You read my mind during sex, Vader; I'll be truly astonished if you think that's how I see it. I like to submit to you without subsuming anything. I let you take liberties, twisted as they are, because I know we'll both enjoy the outcome. But my will remains mine."

Vader took a step closer, herding Tarkin further into the corner. He _had_ noticed what Tarkin was describing, of course. It was the thing that most attracted and most frustrated him. Tarkin would never admit defeat. "You let me take liberties, yes. You let me immobilize you or move you by force. You let me visit torment on your body and fear upon your mind. You let me use you as a vessel for my own pleasure, reduce you to a toy. Once you let me take your power of speech." Though that hadn't exactly made Tarkin _less_ willful; probably not an incident to dwell on. "You know I can do anything I like. I can destroy you. All the freedom that you have in a scene is illusion; it can be taken away if I choose. Why do you need your will?"

Tarkin leaned back against the blank wall behind him. He crossed his arms, but his gaze up at Vader was soft, thoughtful. As if this was admitting to a slight vulnerability. "Vader, have you ever wondered what I get out of all this?"

"You find it pleasurable. That is obvious."

"Yes, but have you wondered _why_ I like it? Some people find it comforting to give their choices away. But for me it's the opposite. I like when you hurt me because I know I'll find a way to survive it. You can do as you like, and I'll endure and adapt, even steer the situation in the direction I prefer. In a way, that feels like besting you. That's what I like about it. It's one thing for you to take options away by force. But if I were to choose to be docile, or to act pitiable, then I wouldn't be enjoying myself anymore."

Vader felt a flare of irritation. That description was consistent with what he usually felt in Tarkin's mind. But it didn't seem at all compatible with taking orders. Tarkin had said he'd try Vader's fantasy if it was compatible with his needs, but maybe it wasn't; maybe he'd gone in knowing nothing would be. Tarkin could be tricky like that, when he wanted to.

Vader loomed closer, until Tarkin was practically in his shadow. "Then why did you make me believe you might comply? I do not appreciate being tricked."

Tarkin looked up at him with that purposefully bland, clipped expression he always got when Vader had crossed some line. "Because I'm not tricking you, actually. There are ways to take orders without surrendering one's whole being. I used to do it at work all the time. I just need you to understand _how_ I'll do it. I'll carry out tasks efficiently, but I won't fawn on you. And if you try to reduce me to less than I am, I'll resist. Just as I do in our other scenes. Is that acceptable?"

Vader regarded him. So often, in their scenes, he'd searched for a way to break Tarkin's will, and nothing ever worked. That was one of the maddening and attractive things about Tarkin. If Vader couldn't break Tarkin by force, he'd hoped maybe he could get around that problem another way. By consent, since that was what most of Tarkin's little rules about kink boiled down to.

He'd had submissives before who were happy to act broken: people who sat at his feet, who begged, who asked permission to move or speak, who called him Master. He liked it. Of course, he liked Tarkin's way of doing things, too - it was hard for Vader to tell, sometimes, which things he liked for their own sake, and which things he liked because he had a submissive who responded to them by radiating the most delicious sort of pleasure. That was a hazard of sharing people's senses as Vader did. He liked sex; he liked inflicting pain; he liked partners who feared him and wanted him anyway. The rest was more flexible than he wanted to admit.

But - he'd hoped.

"I will adapt," said Vader

 Tarkin was still looking up into Vader's face, outwardly unmoved. Internally, Vader could feel something shift, some concern briefly tempering his earlier desire.

"Let me ask you a question back, then," said Tarkin. "Were you hoping for a different answer? Is there some need I'm not meeting? Perhaps we can creatively address that."

Vader wasn't sure. And he didn't want to admit that he wasn't sure. He wanted to start the damn scene; he'd gone without for too long.

"No," he said shortly.

Tarkin raised his eyebrows.

Vader knew that Tarkin could keep him talking for hours if he really wanted to. There were forms of kink negotiation that could take longer than the scene itself, discussing every little thing that would be done, and in what order, and in what way. Tarkin was the kind of relentless planner who might actually enjoy that. Vader found the very idea exhausting. He liked to listen to his impulses in the moment, to go by feel. And he was willing to bet that Tarkin wouldn't stop him. He might put up a token protest in the name of protocol, but Tarkin had been wishing for this exactly as long as Vader had.

Vader reached out a hand, cupped Tarkin's face again, as he'd done outside. Pulled him, with the Force, a little closer. "We will discuss my needs later. For now, I will accept your constraints, and we will begin.  I have waited for this."

Tarkin's lip curled again, slightly. As if Vader had made some childish mistake. But Vader had bet correctly; he didn't resist. "Very well."

Vader let go, and began his usual method of attuning himself to Tarkin's senses. Focusing by turns on every square inch of skin on Tarkin's body; applying the mildest, lightest pressure, and listening to the Force until he could feel it fully himself, until Tarkin's sensations felt as vivid as his own.  This was how sex worked for Vader. Injured as his body was, it could be difficult for him to feel physical pleasure of his own, but he'd learned that other people's could be just as good. Better, even; other people's pleasure, when Vader did it right, came with mental sensations too, with an impossibly vivid sense of their own admiration and desire. He could get lost in that.

He watched as Tarkin tried and failed to control his face, his eyes fluttering briefly shut at the feel of Vader exploring his body. Oh, he _had_ been pent up, no matter how he pretended otherwise. The preliminaries didn't always get him like this.

Vader stepped back, giving Tarkin a bit more room. He gestured to the suspiciously soft blue-gray carpet. It was well past time to give his first order.

"Kneel."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Caped Morogast is inspired by the [vampire squid from hell, ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_squid)and by the [giant manta ray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_oceanic_manta_ray).


	3. Sailor's Lantern

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tarkin tries taking Vader's orders for a night. It doesn't quite go as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, smut! (Sex scenes are slower for me to write than other scenes, not sure why. Also, this chapter's on the long side. Took a while.)
> 
> Also I'm really bad at writing content warnings! Because so much of what I do here is just "idk, weird kinky villain shit happened, not even sure how else to categorize." But, in particular, if you have any triggers around drowning or dubcon roleplay then this MIGHT NOT be the smut chapter for you. Everybody's going to turn out okay in the end! Just... you know. :)
> 
> ...If you read the previous works in this series then you do have a pretty good idea of how weird things are about to get. If you didn't and don't want to, for some reason, then, uh..... hi?
> 
> *drops fic and runs away*

**_Blue-Throated Alqapin._ ** _This playful mammal, the size of a ten-year-old child, hunts in schools near the surface of Scarif's oceans. Intelligent and adaptable, the alqapin feeds on any kind of small fish, and has been known to devise methods of scaring even the trickiest prey out of hiding. The name comes from the alqapin's colorful throat sac, similar to that of a frog, which inflates to send out the langorous calls by which the alqapin communicate._

*

Tarkin had been waiting for this, and although he should perhaps have waited longer, the feel of Vader settling in to his skin was even sweeter than he remembered. Like the first bite of food after working up a true appetite. He sank to the ground, both knees folded under him.

He hadn't wanted to admit it outright, but he had never played submissive in quite this way. Before Vader, Tarkin had more often preferred the dominant role. On the occasions when he'd switched, those partners had sometimes tried to give instructions, and he'd sometimes played along. But he'd never gone into it like this, agreeing ahead of time that he'd do his best to obey. He thought he knew enough to anticipate what that would be like for him, but sometimes one couldn't quite be sure.

"Not like that," said Vader. "On one knee. Bow your head."

Tarkin shifted position, genuflecting. He suppressed an odd, bemused reaction: the most common use of this particular obesiance, outside kink, was for high-ranking officials to pay respect to the Emperor. Did Vader dream, then, of supplanting his master? Of ruling the galaxy outright?

That would not be a safe question to ask aloud. Especially if the answer was "yes."

"You will address me as Lord Vader."

"Yes, Lord Vader," Tarkin said crisply. That part would be easy; it was Vader's preferred title in everyday life, though Tarkin veered more informal when they were alone.

"Give me your name and your rank."

Like a soldier who'd been taken prisoner, Tarkin thought. That was at least mildly interesting. Obviously they were still warming up now, setting the scene. "Wilhuff Tarkin. Grand Moff administrating the Outer Rim."

"No," said Vader.

Tarkin quirked an eyebrow, glancing up at him.

"You have no name worth speaking," said Vader. "You are a Rebel prisoner. As you have no information of use to the Empire nor any value as a hostage, you have been given to me for my personal amusement. When I am no longer amused, I will kill you. Do you understand?"

Ah, Tarkin thought. Roleplay. He and Vader hadn't done that before. Vader should have mentioned it at the negotiation stage, but then, Tarkin was the one who'd let him cut that part short. He could work with this.

Tarkin had seen Rebel prisoners so defiant - loudly or stonily, as personality dictated - that they put his own usual willfulness to shame. But he didn't think Vader wanted that; he'd asked for obedience. Nor was Tarkin prepared to go to the opposite extreme, to plead or cower, even while pretending to be someone else.

He'd be a warily cooperative Rebel, then. One who might have ideas about escape later, when Vader's attention wasn't on him, but who'd decided compliance was his best chance of survival for now.

"Yes, Lord Vader."

"Say it back to me."

"I am a Rebel prisoner whose name is not worth mentioning. I have no information nor value as a hostage, and in lieu of the normal termination protocol I've been given to you for your amusement."

Saying it aloud felt... interesting. Tarkin rather liked it when Vader spoke to him degradingly, but he'd never had to say the lines himself. They were very mild, as self-degradation went, yet they felt like a surprisingly large concession. He felt a bit vulnerable suddenly, as if his clothes or his sight had been taken.

It was odd that Vader wanted to play, explicitly, with the threat of death - even only in the background. Last visit he had confessed that he feared Tarkin's death very much. Vader had killed people he cared for before, and that memory haunted him. Was he now trying, as some did, to work through his fears with a fantasy? That tactic could be helpful sometimes, but carried definite dangers. It, too, should have been negotiated in advance.

Unless Vader didn't _realize_ he was playing with his own deep-seated fears. That was a more common mistake than one would think.

It wasn't something Tarkin cared to address aloud at the moment, either way. He was only doing what he often did. Trying extra-hard to figure Vader out, so he wouldn't have to think about his own skin under his clothes feeling cold and exposed.

"Good enough," Vader said, after a moment's pause. "Next time, you will repeat my words more precisely. But not now. Strip yourself, Rebel."

When Vader wanted Tarkin stripped, he normally did it himself. But tonight would be all about what Tarkin could be induced to do under his own power.

"Yes, Lord Vader," he said, and reached for the fastenings of his tunic. He hadn't been given any orders about _how_ , so he defaulted to undressing efficiently, as he would before showering or climbing into bed alone, without any attempt at either bashfulness or seduction. His hands felt unaccountably clumsy; he did not actually fumble, but he could not shake the sudden worry that he wasn't going fast enough, precise enough, _something_ enough.

"Fold your clothes and leave them on the dresser," Vader instructed. "The blaster as well. We would not want any mess."

Tarkin did that, then. He folded everything into precise squares, which gave his mind something to focus on other than apprehension. None of this felt pleasurable yet, but there was a nervous vulnerability of the type could turn to arousal quickly, once the right sensations were applied, the right words said. He could keep playing along until then.

"Turn," Vader said, making a motion with his gloved hand, as Tarkin finished folding and placing the last garment. He straightened and turned in a slow circle for inspection.

Vader knew Tarkin's body very well, and there was no real chance of him disliking what he saw, even aged and thin as it was. The only new thing was the keloid scar circling his lower leg, a relic of the lava monster on Mustafar. Jagged and pink and raised slightly from the surrounding flesh. In terms of sensation and functionality, the area had fully healed. Even the remaining pinkness would fade over time, though the actual shape might not. Tarkin had a good number of scars already; this one fit right in.

"You are not the most enticing plaything I have been given," Vader said coolly, "but you will serve."

Tarkin narrowed his eyes. "How is it that I will serve you, Lord Vader?"

"That remains to be seen. Follow me downstairs; there is information I require."

Vader turned and strode out of the room, and Tarkin followed, knowing Vader would feel it if he hesitated to obey.

"I thought you said I had no information of use to the Empire," he observed, as his bare feet carried him down the carpeted steps and back into the beach house's main room. That big observation window still looked out from the main room onto the sea, where modest waves broke in their gentle rhythm.

"Not to the Empire," Vader responded. "But to me personally. If you fail to address me properly again, there will be consequences."

Ah. Of course his first mistake would be with the part he'd thought easiest. "Yes, Lord Vader."

Vader made his way to the holo table and gestured to it. "This is where you keep this house's data?"

"Yes, Lord Vader." Not his work or personal data; that was encrypted on his datapad, left in the pocket of his discarded slacks upstairs. But general data suitable for guests to access, information on the local islands and other odds and ends, all that was here.

Vader brushed the controls, and a visual file system sprang into the air over the table. Vader studied it critically, then gestured to the carpeted floor at his feet. "Kneel here, and answer questions put to you."

Tarkin obeyed, settling down on both knees. The table was low enough that he could still see the display, vaguely, though he might have to crane his neck for details. Vader didn't correct his posture this time.

The temptation to play the Rebel role fully, to refuse all questioning until Vader beat the answers out by force, was strong. Vader had said his questions wouldn't be useful to the Empire, but no Rebel with any brains would trust that statement. Yet Vader had not wanted an interrogation scene; he had wanted obedience. He had been very clear on that.

"Who else lives on this island?" Vader asked.

"No one, Lord Vader. It is private property, belonging to Grand Moff Tarkin." He suppressed a smile; the odd edges where a roleplay scene clashed with reality always amused him. "Who is not here at the moment, nor are his servants. No one else approaches the island without his permission."

"And no such person has been invited here?"

"No, Lord Vader."

"Can no one see this island from neighboring islands, or from a pleasure craft?"

"No, Lord Vader. Not at the moment." Private islands on Scarif were _very_ private; that was one of their selling points.

"Then if I were to take you outside and have my way with you there, on the beach, no one would see."

Tarkin swallowed nervously. "That is correct, Lord Vader."

He half expected Vader to leave the holo-table and lead him outside right then - he knew Vader's usual impatience - and the thought was enough to warm him slightly, to make him want it. Kneeling and answering factual questions was tolerable, but Tarkin wanted the next phase, Vader's Force-touch on his body again, pain and lust. The part that he actually enjoyed.

Instead Vader turned the map of the island with a gesture, inspecting it critically. "Is there anything on this island, or in the shallows around it, which would pose a danger to a naked, unarmed humanoid?"

"No, Lord Vader," said Tarkin. He'd been researching that; he'd had the better part of an hour to peruse some of the holo-table's more obscure records before Vader arrived. The commandeering of Scarif for Imperial projects had involved a thorough survey of the local wildlife, which was still occasionally updated by a team of biologists. The _Sea Life of Scarif_ holobook had helped Tarkin mentally contextualize the names from those reports. Nothing remotely hazardous lived near his island: no man-eaters, no appreciable poison. The worst were the alqapin, which could cause minor injuries with their bites if startled, but they rarely ventured close enough to shore to bother waders. Nor was there appreciable undertow, or any other inorganic hazard, so long as the weather held out.

"The shoreline in front of this house is made of sand. Are any of this island's shores otherwise?"

Tarkin pressed his lips together impatiently. He did not understand whatever this problem was that Vader had with sand. "Not many, Lord Vader, but the south shore is rockier."

"Show me. How long will that shore take to reach on foot?"

He reached up, with some minor difficulty, and pointed out the relevant area on the map. "Less than ten minutes, Lord Vader. It's not a particularly large island."

"That will do." Vader dismissed the holo map and then gestured to Tarkin. "Up, Rebel."

Tarkin stood. As soon as he'd straightened, he felt an efficient Force pull, tugging his hands behind his back and holding them there. Like cuffs, but without the bite and pressure of physical restraints.

"Lead me to the south shore," Vader instructed.

Tarkin had known that was coming, yet he hesitated. He'd bathed nude outside his beach house before - it was, as he'd said, very private, and Vader wasn't the first lover he'd ever invited here. But he hadn't done it like _this,_ Force-bound and vulnerable, and certainly not so far from the building. He glanced up the stairs involuntarily, wishing for his blaster.

Vader noticed the pause and turned his head slightly. "You desire your weapon. Why?"

Tarkin couldn't resist biting out the most obvious, snide response. "I'm a Rebel and you're the Emperor's enforcer, Lord Vader. Why do you think?"

"Yet your fear is not directed at me; I can feel that. Have you lied to me, Rebel? You say there are no hazards, yet you fear something out there."

He took a breath, wondering how to explain this within the bounds of the scene. Nothing hazardous lived in the local environment. But - if Palpatine _wanted_ hazards, he could arrange for them. The lava monster on Mustafar hadn't been local; he'd found that out some time afterwards. It normally resided in a different part of the planet, but Palpatine had moved it where he'd wanted it.

Tarkin recognized what his mind was doing, though. He had literally written the book on controlling people through fear. It was one thing to keep informed about hazards and bring protection, just in case. But if he let himself be stopped altogether - if he shied away from what he'd normally have wanted to do, just on the faint chance that Palpatine might become involved again - then that would be a victory for Palpatine, every bit as real as if the monster had eaten him.

"I don't relish the thought of being outdoors unarmed, Lord Vader," he replied. "But that's not due to any hazard here. Only habit, bolstered by experience on other worlds with more dangerous terrains."

Vader gestured to the door. "Then your fear shall serve to amuse me further. Out, Rebel."

The door hissed open and shut behind them. Tarkin carefully led Vader up one of the stone paths. It would not be a long walk, but he was cautious in how he placed his bare feet, mindful that he couldn't catch himself if he fell. The path was smooth, but Tarkin's groundskeeping servants weren't here right now, and he wasn't sure how carefully they'd kept each path cleared of debris. At least it was a clear night; both the shield-aurora and the stars were bright.

"You have been cooperative," Vader remarked, as they crested a small hill. This part of the path wound through a small stand of areca nut trees, where both the beach house and the sea disappeared from view. It was darker here in the canopy's shadow, and only pride prevented Tarkin from slowing his pace even further. "More than I would have expected, even with your life in my hands. Tell me, Rebel, do you fear me?"

Tarkin was glad he was still talking. Factual questions hadn't been especially exciting, but Tarkin liked to be talked to, and this question felt promising. "Any Rebel who doesn't is foolish, Lord Vader. We're all aware what you can do."

Vader's voice lowered in amusement. "That is not a yes or a no."

"I fear you, yes." And that, somehow, brought the feeling of concession again. Tarkin was a bit annoyed with himself. Compared to the confessions he sometimes extracted from his own partners, this was _quite_ mild _._ Yet Tarkin normally put so much effort into standing firm, regardless of what frightened him. He was playing a character, he reminded himself, that was all. It was all right for his character to be a bit weaker than himself. "All of us fear you. It's really a very worst-case scenario, running into you on a mission."

"Yet I somehow feel you do not fear me enough." Vader came to an abrupt halt, and Force-caught Tarkin by his bound wrists, turning him stumblingly back so they faced each other. Only the general suggestion of Vader's outline, and the inscrutable blinking lights at his abdomen, were visible in the nighttime gloom. "I ask you about your fear, and you answer as though you are deducing it. You do not _feel_."

Tarkin thought that was unfair. He had, of course, roleplayed before. Some people did have a knack - as far as Tarkin, with his mundane senses, could tell - of immersing themselves in an imagined scene, bringing their character's emotions viscerally to life. But if one didn't already have that knack, it wasn't something that could be simply switched on.

But Vader felt his partners' emotions directly. Perhaps, when someone's emotions didn't match the scenario, it became intolerable to him. Like sorting through two different contradictory stimuli at once, or being lied to.

Tarkin took a breath, attempting to focus the way he'd seen more skilled roleplayers do. He tried to look at Vader the way a frightened Rebel would. A shadow in the night, a looming portent of death itself - but, while those metaphors did stir something, it was more about desire than fear. Tarkin loved deadly things, loved to play with their sharp edges and use them for his own ends, and he could not quite forget, standing in the warm night air on his own private island, that Vader was on _his_ side.

"Perhaps you are simply an unfeeling Rebel," Vader said silkily, after a moment. "Perhaps that is why you proved of no value to them. So you will need assistance to fear me."

And before Tarkin could respond, Vader had thrown him to the ground.

He caught himself on his elbows, throwing his arms out instinctively; Vader had released them from their previous Force-restraint just in time. He was half on stone and half on dirt. He was unhurt; Vader had, as always, slowed his fall enough to avoid injury. He caught his breath and moved to push himself up - only to catch a sharp blow in the side, like a kick from a jackboot, making him double over.

"Anyone can be frightened by sufficient pain," Vader observed calmly, as another invisible kick rained down, and another, and another. "You will simply require... more."

Normally Vader immobilized Tarkin before hurting him like this. It was easier to bear pain with dignity when one couldn't move. When all one could do was relax into it. This barrage made him want to throw his hands out in defense, to curl and protect his belly, but those gestures were useless. He tried them and only managed to writhe, as the onslaught continued regardless, blows that felt like they'd bruise or even crack something, much _harder_ than what Vader usually began with, and entirely incorporeal.

"What about now, Rebel?" Vader queried, as Tarkin flailed on the ground. He'd rolled off the path, onto the root-strewn dirt. "Do you find this unpleasant?"

Tarkin raised his head, nostrils flaring, and answered before he could stop himself. "At least now you're _doing_ something." He remembered, at the last second, to add, "Lord Vader," before a heavy slap came to his face and knocked it back downwards.

He liked pain. It wasn't enough by itself, but it took his attention and absorbed his senses, and he knew from long experience how much _Vader_ liked it, how it stoked Vader's lust when Tarkin took the pain he gave and snarled back at him unbroken.

"I see," Vader purred. "Your feelings betray you.  _I_ see now why you are not afraid."

At once Tarkin he Force took hold of Tarkin again and jerked him into an awkward sitting position, his legs still curled under him, his back against the rough bark of a tree. Vader hit him again, this time with something that stung, half-electric; this sensation was a staple of theirs, and Tarkin particularly liked it. He hissed in a breath through his teeth. He could feel his blood abruptly hot in his veins, a warm tension rising between his legs.

He was having immense difficulty being a Rebel. A proper Rebel in this position would surely have tried to deny it, to scramble away, even if his body responded. Tarkin couldn't bring himself to cower like that, particularly not from something he wanted. He did want Vader, the way Vader usually had him, hungrily fierce and direct and all Tarkin's.

"What a poor Rebel you are," Vader mused, "to crave me as you do." Oh, good, Tarkin thought distantly; at least _Vader_ knew how to improvise around his reactions. "Is that why your friends abandoned you here? Do they imagine it a kindness, giving you what you so desire?"

Tarkin curled his lip as a half-formed thought came to him, an alternate explanation for why a masochistic Rebel might be here, but Vader hit him in the chest again, quite solidly, and the thought dissolved. The next blow, less than half a second later, was to his inner thigh, kicking his knees wide apart. _Stars,_ they weren't even going to make it to the beach. Tarkin braced himself.

Then everything let go. The pain vanished, and he was just sitting in the warm night air, half-erect and breathless, against a tree.

"Do not deceive yourself," Vader warned. "You are here for my amusement, not your own. Even when I tire of you, this will not be easy, nor quick. Get up. Walk."

"Yes, Lord Vader," Tarkin managed. On slightly shaky legs, he obeyed.

His head cleared a little once he was upright. The thought that had dissolved, against the tree, came back to him. Given Vader's habit of promiscuity, a Rebel with a crush on him might not be considered useless at all. Quite the contrary: if they had the mental strength to hide where their loyalties lay, then such a Rebel could be planted to engage in the time-honored tradition of espionage through seduction. Gathering information on Vader's movements and plans, perhaps even influencing his actions. They would not be planted as a prisoner, of course; that was a bit far-fetched. The easiest option would be simply to install them at the sex club Vader frequented.

Oh, dear. He and Vader would need to have a talk about that at some point. Later.

He was so distracted he nearly stumbled as they cleared the trees and stepped off the path, onto the south shore. By an accident of geology, this side of the island was a shingle beach, a wash of gray and black volcanic pebbles smoothed to a marble-like sheen by the waves.

He heard Vader's footsteps halt behind him, and he turned, awaiting his next instruction.

"You are capable of fear after all, I see," Vader observed. "But I require more. I will have you quaking beneath me, Rebel, before I take my pleasure. Wade into the water."

"Yes, Lord Vader," Tarkin said, warily obeying. Vader followed him, the pebbles grinding under his heavy boots. Tarkin's own footsteps barely made a sound until he splashed into the waves, feeling the warm tropical sea wash over his ankles and toes.

"It is safe to wade further here, is it not? Say, to chest height?"

"Yes, Lord Vader. That's not a problem." He appreciated Vader double-checking; Vader was rarely so careful in a scene. It would have made Tarkin suspicious, if he didn't know that the whole thing was improvised.

But, improvised or not, Vader seemed sure that he _could_ make Tarkin sufficiently afraid. That very confidence sent a shiver, barely suppressed, through Tarkin's body. Vader had made him deathly afraid before, but usually only by accident, or by losing his famous temper. Could he produce that reaction, under controlled circumstances, on purpose?

"Follow me," Vader instructed.

Vader waded outward and Tarkin followed, letting the waves lap higher and higher up his legs. It was hard to define exactly where _chest height_ began in the rolling surf, but it was a reasonable descriptor for where Vader stopped: an even stretch where the waves' lowest troughs dipped just below Tarkin's navel, and their highest peaks lapped at his collarbones. Tarkin braced himself carefully against the current; they'd waded past the point where the waves broke, and the remaining swells were gentle, but there was still a rhythmic push and pull, a force that might have made him stumble if he was unwary.

He felt his wrists spring loose of the hold Vader had on them, and his hands returned to his sides

"I need to test that you are still cooperating," said Vader. "You must do as I say under your own power, or this will not work. Stand at attention."

Tarkin silently complied; the posture was familiar and simple, despite the buffeting of the waves.

"At ease." Tarkin complied with that, too. "At attention." And back again. "Good," Vader said, his voice low enough that Tarkin had to focus to ensure he caught it all, over the sounds of breath and wave. "Now get on your hands and knees."

Tarkin blinked, unsure he'd heard correctly. "Here? But-"

Vader's voice did rise, at that. "Do as I say, Rebel."

Tarkin worked his jaw for a second, as another wave came and went. He trusted Vader, mostly. This Rebel character probably wouldn't.

But he was doing this under his own power, and Vader hadn't specified that he had to _stay_ down. Really, ducking underwater for a moment was child's play. He could do it. It would be a show of weakness if he claimed he could not.

"Yes, Lord Vader," he said, cool and clipped.

He breathed in deeply, then sank to his knees, letting his head submerge and the roar of the sea fill his ears. He opened his eyes, blinking away a slight sting, but could see very little in the dark. A water-blurred hint of the rocks around him, that was all, not even the thick shadows of Vader's legs a few feet away. He put out his hands and crawled forward until he stabilized on all fours. As formally as if it were attention or parade rest, arms and thighs vertical, back flat. He stayed there, counting his own heartbeats, until he was satisfied that the feel of it had correctly sunk in, that Vader would understand he'd cut no corners. Then he pushed himself back up, breathing deeply again as his head broke the surface.

"Obedient," Vader purred. "Good. I so rarely meet such a cooperative Rebel. Why do you obey me?"

Because that was a parameter of the scene, Tarkin thought, mildly annoyed. More fundamental to what they were doing than the roleplay. He wouldn't have mixed the two in quite this way, if he were Vader.

"You've said I'll only live as long as I amuse you," Tarkin pointed out, raising his eyebrows slightly. "I assumed this was the way. Or are you more amused by disobedience?" There; give _Vader_ something to confess to, for once.

Vader's voice went cold, which meant Tarkin had hit his mark. "Get back down."

Tarkin took a breath and slipped under the water. It was easier this time, more familiar. He assumed the correct position, counted a few heartbeats, moved to get back up.

Or tried to.

For a wrenching instant, he couldn't pull his hands up from the pebbly bottom. He was trapped there, Force-immobilized. He couldn't pull himself up to breathe -

And then he could. He shot to the surface, gasping. He hadn't been under long enough to lose his breath, only to panic at the thought that he would.

Real fear, after all. Of course that was how Vader would do it out here.

"Again," said Vader, amused and implacable.

Before he could overthink it, before he could lose his nerve, Tarkin bent his knees and sank below the surface again.

He stayed on all fours a heartbeat less, this time. He knew what would happen. He moved to get up and the Force stopped him. He struggled against it, tense and urgent but less blankly panicked this time, now that he expected it. Vader held him down a second longer than before, and a small bubble of air escaped his mouth, blurring the water in front of his eyes. Then Vader let go and he pulled himself to the surface again, dripping, gasping.

He could survive this, he knew. This wasn't _safe,_ not in the sense that people at the sex clubs meant when they enforced that term, but Vader was paying attention, feeling what he felt. Vader would not make a mistake.

"Good, Rebel," said Vader. "But you are still in your head. You are not _feeling_. Give in to your fear."

Tarkin shook his head slightly. "I don't understand, Lord Vader." He couldn't turn his emotions on and off by force of will. What reaction was Vader looking for? An attempt to flee? To disobey? Pleading and cowering, which Tarkin had already specified he wouldn't do?

"Give in," Vader insisted.

Something in his tone felt... odd. As if _give in to your fear_ was not an instruction but a ritual phrase, something that couldn't be said any other way. "Lord Vader, what do you want me to _do?_ "

Vader's voice dripped with scorn. "You would understand if you knew the Force. But if you knew that, the Rebels would have valued you. It does not matter. Get under the water again."

Tarkin complied, wondering if Vader had intentionally set him up to fail. He still didn't understand.

The water around him again, and his hands and knees carefully placed on the sea floor, and the struggle again. This time, longer, by another second, before Vader let him up to break the surface.

"You say you wish to survive," Vader said, his voice gone silky again as Tarkin spluttered for breath. "Yet you place your life in my hands, willingly, again and again." He took a step closer; one of his hands made a lazy motion Tarkin couldn't quite see, under the waves. "But I forget your other reason for being here. You comply because you wish for a reward. Don't you?"

And suddenly, finally, Vader's Force-touch returned. A langorous caress, from the most sensitive part of Tarkin's chest and slowly downward. All the way down, to the base of his cock, where it - _oh._ Terror had sharpened Tarkin's senses as it always did. He had barely caught his breath yet. Vader pulsed there a moment, let Tarkin feel himself harden and rise, before giving a single tease of a stroke. This was hardly anything; it shouldn't have unraveled Tarkin in the way that it did, shrinking his mind to a point of sensation. The water, the struggle for breath, had already broken so many of his defenses. He wanted - he _needed_ -

"Yes, Lord Vader," he whispered. Another concession, another admission of weakness. He felt that and hardly cared. The part of his mind that should have cared was somehow floating, unmoored.

"Get on your hands and knees again."

He obeyed automatically this time, a deep breath and a dive under the waves. He found his position, and he felt himself rewarded with another teasing stroke. Maybe Vader would fuck him to completion just like this, short gasps of air and pleasure between the drowning. He wasn't entirely sure he could bear that, but he wanted it, wanted to prove he could.

He moved to rise again and felt the expected Force-pressure holding him down. He fought it, knowing it would take a second longer than before. That was how this seemed to be going: just a little longer each time, a game of endurance.

Vader did not let him up.

He thrashed, wondering if he'd counted wrong. If his heartbeat had sped too fast, and Vader was counting by something else entirely. But the Force held him there as the current gently buffeted him. The waves swelled and danced out of reach above his head. Air bubbled unwillingly out of his mouth and nose. His lungs emptied as his panic grew, as he fought.

His chest hurt. He was beginning to genuinely worry he might inhale, in desparation, and let the salt water into his lungs.

If he couldn't get up, perhaps he could drag himself into shallower water. He tried that, lunging out forwards instead of upwards. Vader caught him before it had any appreciable effect. He scrabbled fruitlessly at the pebbly sea floor, suddenly enraged.

_Then_  Vader pulled him up to the surface. The air hurt as he sucked it in, desperate, stumbling. He wasn't going to do that again. That had been _too_ much. Vader had, in his most characteristic way, exceeded his bounds.

"Again, Rebel," Vader growled.

"No," said Tarkin.

The word felt odd somehow, effortful, as if he was listening to a slightly different Wilhuff Tarkin say it nearby. He meant it, though. He stood straight, faced Vader as squarely as he could. He could do that much, even now.

Vader took a step towards him, the helmet tilting. "You deny me at last."

"You asked me to give in to my fear, Lord Vader," Tarkin responded. He wished he couldn't hear the slight shake in his voice; wished his mind did not, at the moment, feel waterlogged. "My fear tells me I am not doing that again."

Another step. Vader loomed over him, his breath a loud hiss over the roar of the sea. "And what does your fear tell you to do instead? To beg for mercy? To flee? To fight? _Show_ me."

Tarkin turned and walked quickly, with as much dignity as he could, back toward the shallows.

He made it two whole steps before Vader pulled his feet out from under him and forced his head under the water.

This time it was even worse. He hadn't had time to fill his lungs. He thrashed blindly and felt himself pulled against the current; he was too panicked to even work out the direction. 

Then his head did break the surface, and he found that he'd been thrown to the shore. He panted, water running down his face, and tried to pull himself upright. He was past the breakers, into the surf that rode up the beach. Ankle-deep at its lowest, though it undulated higher.

Perhaps he should run, he thought for a wild moment, as he caught his breath. Vader was somewhere behind him, and would be slowed by the water. Tarkin had a head start. It would be absurd, like a scene from a cheap holovid; Vader would still catch him quickly enough. He'd trip over a tree root or some other such nonsense, or else Vader would just grab him with the Force.

But by the time Vader caught him - and fucked him, or tormented him further, or whatever it was that Vader had planned - he'd be out of the water.

He ran.

He instinctively took a zigzagging path, as if he expected blaster fire. He felt strange, ashamed of his panic, and of the arousal that still flickered in him at the thought of Vader giving chase. Fleeing from a predator at top speed like this was a terrible idea; mostly it only encouraged them. Vader had ordered him to show weakness, and he _had,_ and that was - not usual.

He'd made it past the tide line, nearly all the way back to the trees, when he felt himself lifted bodily off the ground. The world swung around him, and he was pressed backwards, against the nearest trunk, facing the beach.

Vader took his time. Tarkin watched, panting, as that black bulk strode out of the surf and up towards him. Very close, until his breath drowned out the more distant sound of the waves. He reached out with a gloved hand and touched Tarkin's twitching chest.

"I told you," Vader purred, "that I would have you quaking."

The Force pawed at him all over, a warm contrast with the sea breeze that played against his soaked and dripping skin. As if Vader had more hands than Tarkin could count, pressing in to all sides of his torso, his thighs. He left Tarkin's cock alone, which only made him more maddeningly aware of how it twitched, hard and expectant. Vader had caught him; fine. There was no other way this could have ended. Maybe Vader would stop toying with him now, take him fully. He wanted that. He was trembling and it was entirely unseemly and he wanted it.

"Perhaps I will let you live, after all, Rebel. Perhaps you are amusing enough to keep alive. But you must do something for me."

Tarkin swallowed; speech still felt more effortful than it should have. "What, Lord Vader?"

"Ask me for what you want." Vader traced his hand up from Tarkin's chest to his face, tugged it upwards so there was nowhere to look but into that black shadow of a mask. "I could do it to you anyway; you are entirely in my power. But I want you to ask, so your failure to rebel will be complete."

Tarkin blinked back, understanding the trap, the last bit of capitulation.

"I want you to fuck me, Lord Vader," he whispered. Maybe he was getting into character after all; it shouldn't have felt so transcendently shameful for Tarkin to ask his lover for sex. But for a Rebel, oh, for a Rebel to give himself over so fully. "Take me. Please-"

And then he snapped his mouth shut. Bit his tongue, horrified. The word had come out without thinking. Tarkin _did not beg._ He stared up at Vader, not trusting himself to say another word.

The sound Vader made in response was nothing short of an animal growl.

The Force closed in an instant around Tarkin's cock, tight and slick and strong. No tease, this time, only a fast rhythmic tug so intense that it drove all other thought out of his head. His eyes shut of their own volition, his head lolled back against the tree. His hands tried to twitch, to scrabble at the bark behind them, but they seemed incapable of moving now. Vader held him firm from the collarbones down, as he so often did, and Tarkin relaxed into it, giving himself up.

Vader didn't bother to hurt him, to penetrate him, even to taunt him for the way he'd given in. Vader seemed to need this as urgently as Tarkin did. More. Tarkin opened one eye, vaguely considering: how difficult had it been for Vader, after all this time apart, to draw things out in the way that he had? He'd done better than usual, by Vader's standards.

"You are mine," Vader growled. The words came out one by one, strained with need. Tarkin was so far gone into whatever strange mental space this was that he'd barely remembered how he needed Vader to talk. But Vader had not forgotten. "I have you. My Rebel. Mine. _Mine-_ "

Tarkin's orgasm seemed to pulse all the way from the base of his spine, so hard it hurt, and it kept _going._ Vader didn't slacken his rhythm at all. There was nothing but a breakneck rush of pleasure that blocked out everything else, that didn't seem to end.

Until, gradually, it did, and Tarkin was panting, spent, against the tree.

A second later, Vader's grip released, and Tarkin sank gracelessly to the ground. A few moments passed. The rocky soil at the base of the trees was strewn with old leaves, twigs, fragments of areca shells. Tarkin was shivering.

"It is over," said Vader's voice above him. He didn't immediately move, and Vader crouched down, a gloved hand heavy on his shoulder. "It is over now, Tarkin. Get up."

The sound of his name brought him, ever so slightly, back to himself.

He attempted to stand; his legs wobbled. He tried again, using Vader's arm for a lever. Vader helped him up, and he balanced carefully on both of his feet, bleary. This normally should have been enough, but he didn't feel right.

Vader flattened his gloved palm against Tarkin's shoulder. Another Force-sensation ran down his body, this one gentle, hesitant, like a warm calming breeze.

Tarkin was thinking clearly enough now to recognize what this was. Like any dominant, he'd seen submissives go into altered states of consciousness. It just hadn't happened to _him_ until now. Pain alone never did that to him, but apparently something about Vader's scenario had. Not deeply. Just enough to be disorienting.

He had privately felt superior, before, because of how he kept his head. Like that was proof of his strength. But apparently Tarkin's weak spots were only placed differently. He didn't like that thought.

The fog in his mind was lifting, slowly, but it hurt coming out. He was still shaking, and annoyed with himself for it.

"That was too much," Vader said at last. He sounded regretful. "I asked too much of you."

Tarkin didn't know what to say to that. _No_ would be a lie. He wasn't ready to commit to _yes,_ either, not until he'd had longer to think this through. Just now, _yes_ felt like an admission of weakness of its own, and he'd already had enough of those.

Vader pulled him in closer. Vader's actual arms were wrapped around him. Physically. They'd _never_ done that.

Hating his frailty, Tarkin leaned his head down until it rested against Vader's shoulder plate. It was not especially comfortable. Vader's breath hissed in and out, and the sea did, more faintly, in the distance. Tarkin listened to the way those twin rhythms slowly drifted in and out of sync. For now, if only barely, that was enough.

*

**_Sailor's Lantern._ ** _This bioluminescent predator, a rippling spherical shape about a foot across, is a rare sight. Typically it lurks near the bottom, luring its victims in with complex visual patterns which can mimic a variety of species' mating calls or the movements of their own prey. On stormy nights, the Sailor's Lantern occasionally rises within a few feet of the surface, where it releases its eggs to drift with the plankton. Such gatherings of Sailor's Lanterns, each with its own complex luminescence refracting under the waves, can create the illusion of whole cities far under the water. Legends abound of sailors, having wrecked or gone overboard during inclement weather, falling prey to this sight and swimming willingly down to their graves._

 


	4. Scareworm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vader has a restless night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was sick for a few days and wrote this really fast, b/c sometimes pointless villain trashfic is the only thing I can focus on, hi

Tarkin had always complained that Vader was no good at aftercare, but actually, Tarkin hadn't _needed_ it before. He'd insisted on it for the sake of protocol, and it was Vader's nature to push back against things like that. Now Tarkin was hurt and confused, shivering in his arms, and that was _different_. Vader knew what to do. Mostly.

He helped Tarkin walk back up the path to his beach house. When he felt Tarkin's mind drifting in unhelpful directions, he pulled it back with the sound of his voice. Reminded Tarkin that he'd done well, that he'd pleased him, that the scene was over, that they were safe on this island. He knew better than to try to unpick the scene further just yet. He'd gone too far, clearly, but it wouldn't be helpful to discuss until later. Probably tomorrow, when Tarkin's head was clear.

By the time they reached the beach house, the shivering had mostly stopped, and Tarkin was walking properly instead of leaning on Vader's arm. He keyed in a passcode and the beach house opened to them, as inoffensively blue-gray, brightly lit and comfortable as when they'd left.

The next few minutes were an awkward parade of attempts at comfort. There was a throw blanket neatly folded across the back of one of the couches, and Vader clumsily attempted to wrap it around Tarkin using the Force. This earned him a glare and a shove away. He was glad to see the glare, actually; Tarkin's usual scornful poise was beginning to return. His second attempt was the silver-gray bathrobe he'd seen hanging in the bedroom next to his, and Tarkin accepted that one with an ungraceful sigh, letting Vader belt it gently around him before padding into the big, shiny kitchen to make himself tea.

Vader watched from the doorway. He felt he should help, but he didn't know anything about tea, or about anything else Tarkin might like to eat or drink, and he did not feel like drawing attention to this fact. Vader never ate with his partners. At Fortress Vader, the servants had taken care of all that for him.

"Do you require... milk?" he inquired, Force-opening the shiny, clean, mostly-empty refrigerator. "Or... food?"

"I'm _fine,_ Vader," Tarkin snapped, without looking up from the teakettle. "Don't hover."

Vader could tell he was not fine, but at least he'd recovered enough that the largest remaining wound was to his pride. Tarkin's self-protectiveness should have annoyed Vader, but actually he found it adorable. It had been so many years since Vader allowed himself to look at someone like this, shamelessly basking in the _them_ ness of even their disagreeable traits. It was a pleasure that would not be wise to mention aloud.

They ended up sitting in the common room, across from each other, while Tarkin sipped his tea and finished pulling himself together. Vader had run out of comforting statements that didn't elicit a glare, so he just listened to his own breath, semi-meditative.

"What was that bit about earlier?" Tarkin asked suddenly, as if there had been no awkward silence at all. "The 'give in to your fear' bit."

Vader considered how to answer. It was, of course, part of a Sith litany; its true meaning wasn't accessible to a non-Force-user. A person with Tarkin's senses couldn't fully understand what it meant to give oneself over to fear or rage or hate, to let them one's truest source of power. But Vader liked saying it anyway. There were submissives who did dimly understand; they treated it as a reminder to be in the moment, to act on their instincts, even the bad ones.

Vader looked down at his gloved hands. "I am interested in your basest emotions. Your worst instincts. I thought perhaps I would encourage them."

"You said I wouldn't understand if I wasn't Force-sensitive."

"That is not quite what I said." Vader hesitated. "There is a spiritual meaning to the words, but it is not relevant. I was not truly using them that way."

Tarkin leaned forward slightly. "But it _is_ relevant, isn't it? You don't just happen to feel people's emotions. They're part of your..." His hand, the one that wasn't holding the teacup, made a vague gesture in the air. "Religion. Thing."

Tarkin was, as always, perceptive. And if he was up to asking piercing questions about complicated things, then he was most of the way back to normal. "Do you wish to know about my... religion thing? It is not a discussion for tonight."

Vader had never actually explained the Sith religion to anyone. Most people thought of him simply as an evil Jedi, which was both hilariously wrong and, in many ways, close to the truth. Sith weren't supposed to talk about the difference, except when recruiting. But Tarkin had picked up various classified Sith information over the years. He was familiar with the word, if not its full meaning. He knew that Vader was one, and that the Emperor was, and that the two of them shared a spiritual bond even more intense than that of a Jedi and Padawan. He'd never betrayed that information to anyone. Vader could fill in some of the remaining gaps without endangering anything. It was strange to contemplate, but he could.

"I don't imagine so." Tarkin took another sip, and his eyes flicked up to Vader's over the rim of his teacup. "But in general, Vader, I'm not opposed to anything you want to tell me about yourself. You needn't ever betray confidentiality nor make yourself uncomfortable. But when there are parts of your life that you want to discuss, you should err on the side of assuming I'm interested. We are in a relationship, after all."

He wasn't only talking about religion. Vader could feel that, though not the specifics.

"You may regret that statement," he said, discomfited. "There is much in my life that would shock even you."

"Really? Try me." Tarkin drained his teacup, then set it down heavily on its saucer and stood. "Later. I'm going to shower and sleep. Goodnight, Vader."

"Goodnight," said Vader. He watched Tarkin's mind, its keen curiosity, the pretty way it bristled to hide the remnants of weakness, all the way up the stairs.

*

**_Hyperstar._ ** _This filter feeder anchors itself in Scarif's reefs and sandbars, extending its feathery arms to pick up nutrients carried on the current. When the hyperstar is threatened, these arms retract into its white, bony core. As you can see, this core structure contains a multitude of branches which radiate out equally from its center. When viewed from above against a darker background, this branching structure resembles the streak-like effect seen by pilots entering hyperspace._

*

When Tarkin had retrieved his clothes and blaster from Vader's room and gone to bed, Vader trudged up to that room himself. He wished for the cheerful attentions of his medical droid and the relief of bacta. But the chamber version of his nighttime routine would serve. He opened both boxes on the dresser and methodically loaded medicine packets into the appropriate ports: his usual cocktail of painkillers and other correctives, a small dose of neurotransmitters to help him sleep, the additional medicines he was still tapering off of after the last mission. That done, he climbed into the meditation chamber, arranged himself on the padded chair in its center, and Force-pressed the buttons to initiate operation.

With a whir, the chamber twisted shut, locking itself with a click. It was dim inside, a womblike sphere. There was a hiss as the air within began to warm and pressurize. Vader relaxed fractionally at the sound of that hiss; when a meditation chamber did prove defective, the absence of hiss was often the first and worst sign. He watched as the chamber's mechanical arms extended and reached for him.

The helmet came off first - most of it, anyway. The core of the mask stayed on, over his face, but the back of his head was bared, and the air, only midway through warming, made a brief unpleasant chill against his scalp. At least the chamber was _shut;_ many older models had a bug in their sequencing and would start with the helmet before closing, or finish it a few seconds after opening. This wasn't medically dangerous - Vader's life didn't depend on how cold the back of his head felt - but it led to awkward moments if there was anyone else in the room.

The arms moved steadily downwards, removing the heaviest parts of the suit and placing them aside. His shoulderplate and cape; the indicator panel at his abdomen; his belt and the lightsaber holstered there; the protective plating at his chest and hips. None of it, aside from the helmet, exposed any skin. He was still dressed in his suit's underlayer, a quilting of thick fabrics and leathers which concealed the more complicated apparatus maintaining his body's functions. When his droid undressed him at home, all of that came off too, as did his four prosthetic limbs, and his life support was laboriously transferred to an equally complicated system in the bacta tank. But when away from home, this was generally as undressed as Vader got.

The hiss of pressurization stopped. The chair tilted back and laid him out horizontally, like a corpse on a slab, as the air finished warming to body temperature. It was sufficiently thick and oxygenated now that even Vader's tattered lungs could breathe it, though he preferred the mask. The dim light darkened to blackness. Vader closed his eyes, listened to his breath, and tried to meditate himself to sleep.

It was going to be difficult tonight. He felt restless, despite the neurotransmitters. Tarkin seemed fine - Vader could feel him in the next room, already comfortably asleep. But a familiar guilt gnawed at Vader, the one that often surfaced on nights when a scene hadn't gone quite right.

Vader was a monster. He _liked_ being a monster; it was his calling and his job, the only one he was good for anymore, and he did it well. His submissives liked it, too. But it presented difficulties on nights like these. Vader would always cause harm, even to the people he cared for. He'd held Tarkin in his actual arms for a minute tonight, almost a _hug,_ which was ridiculous; Tarkin had only needed one because Vader had harmed him. No pretense of tenderness would ever change the truth of what he was.

He extended his senses again, seeking distraction. He was used to meditating in the heat of Mustafar or the frigid cold of space. It was harder a planet like Scarif. The Dark Side lived everywhere, but it was thinner here, less obvious. He felt Tarkin's presence, still asleep. He felt the multitude of tiny lifeforms around the beach house, the trees and grasses, crabs and insects and little birds, hiding and rutting and hungering the way life always did. And down into the water, where it was much the same.

His senses burrowed further down. Scarif had a molten core; that was obvious from the volcanoes. But it was hidden far away, under miles of inert stone, and even when he found it, the roil of magma felt muffled somehow. Tame. On Mustafar, Vader had his own private river of lava which ran straight through a Dark Side node; other lava just wasn't quite the same anymore.

He returned to his body and went through his usual sleep exercises. Visualizations, relaxation mantras, counting. After a long while, he conceded that it wasn't going to work. Vader wasn't highly prone to insomnia, but there were nights when only the bacta tank would do, and it looked like tonight would be one of them.

He pressed another sequence of buttons. The dim light gradually returned, and his chair pivoted back upwards. He waited impatiently as the chamber's arms reassembled him. He would further explore the beach house, he decided. That was better than staying here ruminating.

When the chamber opened, he flicked on the bedroom light. The security panel on the wall didn't interest him much. The shelf of holobooks did. He floated a few out of their places and examined them, curious about what Tarkin read on vacation - or, perhaps, what he expected his guests to read. There were treatises on strategy and politics, of course. Several, less technical, to do with science and engineering. There was very little for actual entertainment, although a vague attempt had been made: a couple of historical novels, one that looked like suspense. Vader was pettily amused. Despite how the beach house might look at a glance, Tarkin hadn't struck him as the sort of person who relaxed much, and his bookshelf supported that impression.

He peered into the closet and dresser, but there didn't seem to be any personal effects there. He opened the door and made his way downstairs. Now that he'd started to explore in earnest, he'd become aware of a vague tug at his Force senses. Nothing safety-critical, nothing urgent. Just the mild awareness that, if he wished to spend his energy on learning, this place indeed held something for him to learn.

He paced around, unsure where to start; the feeling wasn't directional. He tried the kitchen first, Force-opening everything. There was very little there. Caf, tea, a bottle of expensive wine, and about forty-eight hours' worth of various fresh foods. A servant must have delivered it all just before Vader arrived. Dishes and kitchenware, all of high quality but generic, and an automatic washer. A nearby pantry held a few shelves of canned rations and other emergency supplies.

Vader put those things back where he found them and tried the holo-desk. This was full of files, including some very technical ones, but they all looked boring and his Force-sense didn't seem to be pointing him at them. He got back up and circled the edge of the common room.

One wall held a small line of unsecured storage bins. Vader opened them. The first: soft blue-gray beach towels, goggles, sun protection and the like. Standard beach accessories. Boring. The second-

The second bin, dustier and slightly more resistant to opening, held an assortment of children's toys.

They were ordinary toys, by a rich child's standards, bright oddments skillfully crafted and carelessly used. Elaborately-shaped buckets for sandcastle-building. Toy soldiers with realistic uniforms and flexible, ball-jointed bodies. Buoyant, air-filled plastic animals which he supposed could be set bobbing on the waves. A whole model AT-ACT made of waterproof materials, which could tromp along convincingly through the shallows.

Children had visited here. Not recently, judging by the dust. But often enough, once, that it had seemed advisable to keep toys here just for them.

Vader shut the bin and stuffed it back against the wall, disturbed. This was too much. He could just barely wrap his mind around the idea of Tarkin owning a beach house, a private place that looked comfortable and inviting and at odds with everything Tarkin was. Appearances could deceive, and inviting things could be used for devious ends. And maybe Tarkin just wanted to be comfortable sometimes. Maybe he was that sort of tyrant, at home with that sort of hypocrisy. But children-

Vader had never asked, actually, about Tarkin and children. Or Tarkin and family at all. It was common knowledge that Tarkin had been born into a powerful family, back on Eriadu, before he joined the military. But otherwise, Vader hadn't thought about it. Tarkin was always at work. Obviously he had picked up some experience with sex and kink somewhere, but fundamentally, Tarkin _was_ work.

He didn't think he could explain why it bothered him so much, imagining otherwise.

Maybe the children weren't Tarkin's. Lots of other possibilities presented themselves. He'd already said that he invited other officials' families, and his own relatives from Eriadu, at times. Either of those groups could easily include children, who would need to be entertained while the adults talked. And certainly Tarkin liked to be prepared.

Vader was tempted to charge back up the stairs and ask about this right _now._ But he knew the look Tarkin would give him if he did. Waking him, especially after this evening's difficulties, was probably not the best plan.

He turned and stormed out the door instad, onto the stone path overlooking the beach. His cape fluttered behind him in the night's breeze, and the waves crashed gently in the distance. He wanted his lightsaber. Wanted to break something.

His lightsaber was right here, of course, at his belt. And it wasn't a bad idea; he had plenty of combat forms to practice. Physical activity was comforting, and with any luck, it might tire his body enough to let him sleep. Routine one hundred and sixty would do it: a nice long one, with lots of flashy saber play but no need for training remotes or other equipment. Just him and the blade and the sea.

He dropped into the beginning of his warm-up, clearing his mind. Let his body move in the ways it remembered so well.

The first twenty minutes of routine one hundred and sixty didn't require his full consciousness, unfortunately: like the beginnings of most of his training routines, they were slow movements, warm-ups and unarmed forms to get him ready for the part with the lightsaber, with some even-more-boring physiotherapy movements mixed in. His mind wandered, circling back to that bin of toys. Had Tarkin ever had children? Why did he never talk about them? Who had he had them _with?_

Another dead woman, maybe, like Vader's?

He'd never wondered before. He didn't usually wonder about his partners's pasts, beyond ascertaining if they'd done kink before. (When they hadn't, he'd found it was best to redirect them, no matter how starstruck and willing they appeared. Darth Vader was _not_ a good starter dominant.) Tarkin had seemed to know what he was doing, and Vader had known what sort of person Tarkin was, and it had never seemed necessary to delve further. No awkward getting-to-know-you phase. Just a dive, once they'd worked out that they both were interested, into wonderful, filthy sex.

But it wasn't just sex anymore. That was why Vader was here, on this island.

Maybe there would be an awkward getting-to-know-you phase after all.

Finally he got to the part with the saber forms. The _snap-hiss_ of the extended blade soothed him. The red glow of his lightsaber looked right to him even when nothing else on this island did. He couldn't trust idyllic trees or the inside of Tarkin's damn house, but he could trust this, the flow of the Force through him, the barely-banked rage that gave him strength. The brutal dance of Sith swordplay, his red blade coming down again and again, cleaving his way through - well, through nothing, but the force of the motion was satisfying nonetheless.

By the time Vader stopped moving, a full hour later, he was feeling better. Sleepy, even. His limbs, on top of their usual background ache, felt heavy in a way that was almost pleasant. He had felt himself sweating, at points, but as usual his suit's self-cleaning inner layers had removed any mess. He was ready to lie back in his meditation chamber and rest.

He reached the front door of the beach house, and only then remembered that he didn't know the passcode.

He tried the door, but it did not budge. Annoyed, he Force-snapped the lock and strode in anyway. He'd pay for a replacement lock later. For now, Vader had had a very frustrating evening and just wanted to sleep.

*

**_Scareworm._ ** _This burrowing creature's name sounds intended to frighten, but that is a coincidence. The prefix is actually short for Scarif, as it is only found on this particular planet. Still, the scareworm cuts an intimidating figure, a twisting body topped with four razor-sharp mandibles. In sandy areas of Scarif's southern hemisphere, the scareworm waits burrowed in the ground for the telltale vibrations of a prey creature's steps, then strikes from ambush. Fortunately, the scareworm is only ten inches long, and its venomous jaws are designed for correspondingly small prey. On the rare occasions when a confused or cornered scareworm does bite a human, its venom causes swelling and a painful rash. But this is mild compared to the scareworm's effect on its intended victims. Here we see a scareworm in the process of consuming a ruby crab, which has been paralyzed and half-liquefied on the inside by the scareworm's toxins._

*

Tarkin woke to a muffled beeping which snapped him to instant alertness. It was his beach house's intruder alarm. Who could possibly have-?

He rolled out of bed and grabbed his blaster from the side table, turning quickly to scope out the room. Whoever the intruder was, they were evidently not in Tarkin's guest room yet. It was, unfortunately, a _guest_ room, despite the fact that he owned the house; the master bedroom had been the only bedroom of sufficient size to house Vader's meditation chamber. Tarkin had accordingly moved his own bed and personal effects into the second-largest bedroom. If Vader hadn't already surmised this from comparing the sizes of the rooms, then Tarkin planned never to bring it up.

The problem with sleeping in the second-best room was that the security panel, from which he could more accurately assess this situation, was in the master bedroom. Hence its muffled sound; he was hearing it through the wall.

Pausing only to slip into his bathrobe for modesty, Tarkin ducked through the hall and into Vader's room, keeping the blaster trained in front of him all the while. The intruder didn't appear to be upstairs yet. He quietly shut the door behind him and, keeping one eye on it and his blaster ready, quickly keyed in the security panel's passcode.

Vader's meditation chamber wasn't making any sound, which was ominous; normally his breath was audible even while he slept. Tarkin would check on that in a moment. First he killed the alarm, then keyed in a command to identify what had triggered it. Security incidents were very rare on Scarif, which only made them more alarming when they did occur. Tarkin needed to know _who_ he was dealing with, and how they were armed, and how many-

He heard footsteps on the stairs, _heavy_ footsteps, and he whirled back to point his blaster at the door, holding his breath. Whoever this was, he heard no hesitance in those steps and no attempt to sneak; this might betray overconfidence, or it might be a diversion, or perhaps a very bad, very justified confidence. Justified as long as Vader was indisposed in his chamber, at least, but that might still be-

The door burst open, and Tarkin found himself foolishly pointing his blaster straight at Vader's face.

He belatedly put the evidence together and realized what must have happened here. With an unimpressed sigh, he lowered his weapon. "You tripped my home security system."

The security panel on the wall, now that Tarkin had fractionally relaxed and could look at it again, was helpfully displaying the scene on a loop. A very small hologram Vader walked up to the hologram front door, rattled it briefly, then - almost without a pause - waved his hand and snapped the lock, pushing his way in. The aurebesh characters scrolling at the side of the screen confirmed the nature of the alarm: the front door lock broken, a single humanoid life form crossing the threshold, no other incursions detected. At least it had correctly classified Vader as a human and not a droid; shipboard systems occasionally got confused on that point.

"I was restless," said Vader. He didn't even sound defensive, only blunt. As if dismissing the concerns of some junior officer. Tarkin automatically drew himself taller in response. "I neglected to learn the passcode before going outside. I will buy you a replacement."

"I should certainly hope so." Tarkin gestured impatiently at the security panel. "Look at this. You didn't even try to use the intercom. Or the doorbell, for Force's sake."

Vader paused. "There is an intercom. I see."

" _And_ a doorbell. Are you _entirely_ unfamiliar with houses?"

Vader glanced at the still-looping hologram. "You need not use that now, you know. No intruder in this place would stand a chance while I am here. Besides, the entire planet is shielded."

Tarkin worked his jaw. "While I appreciate that assurance, I am loath to begin any habit of relaxing my own security protocols, nor of assuming there'll never be a threat from within. Also, it is _three-thirty in the morning_ and I am going back to _bed_. Do not destroy any more of my property, Vader."

He pushed through the doorway. Vader stepped aside to let him pass, but his gloved hand brushed Tarkin's elbow with the mildest imitation of a grip. A request, not a command, to stay.

"Tarkin," he said. More softly, as if he was about to apologize after all.

Tarkin turned back to face him, a dark shape side-lit in the shadowed hall. "Well?"

"You have a bin of children's toys."

That... was not an apology. A complete non-sequitur, in fact. Tarkin supposed that bin _would_ still be there where he'd left it, but he hadn't thought about it in months, maybe years,. "I suppose I do," he answered coolly.

"Why?"

"Children are occasionally invited to this house. It is a family-friendly beach house, despite what you and I have been doing. Let me reiterate: I am going back to bed."

" _Your_ children?" Vader pressed.

Tarkin wordlessly turned and marched all the way back into his room, sitting down heavily on the bed.

He was mildly offended by the question; mostly he was offended at it being sprung on him at three-thirty in the morning when he'd just been awakened by a home invasion alarm. But when he stopped to think about it, he knew why Vader would ask. Why a mind like Vader's might fixate on the question, if he'd gone wandering about the house restlessly and stumbled on that bin.

Vader had never talked about his own romantic history. He was, in fact, violently averse to talking about it. But Tarkin had put together what facts he could, from rumor and from Vader's own reactions. He knew Vader had been married once, before he was Vader, despite the Jedi Order's strictures against it. He knew the woman in question had died at Vader's hand - whether by accident or in anger, Tarkin did not yet know. Vader was still very upset about that, even the better part of two decades later.

Had Vader, in more innocent days, wanted children of his own?

Tarkin exhaled shortly, suppressing the urge to slam the door without an answer. "Not anymore," he said quietly.

Vader loomed awkwardly in the doorway. "You said I should err on the side of assuming you are interested in facts about me," he said - for Force's kriffing sake, Vader did _not_ know how to take a hint, even a little bit. Tarkin wanted to _sleep._ "You also said, earlier, that this relationship should not be one-sided."

His clumsiness would have been amusing, if Tarkin hadn't already been so entirely fed up. Tarkin rearranged himself on the bed, tucking his legs underneath him, drawing his spine up bland and straight.

"What a good point, Vader," he said. "You're absolutely right. I will answer any questions you care to put to me about my family and romantic history, on one condition. Anything you expect me to answer, I will then immediately ask back to you with the same expectation. Does that sound good?"

Vader paused. He had to actually think about it, hah. Either he'd leave Tarkin alone now, or they might start having a conversation interesting enough to stay up for.

"I will see you in the morning, Tarkin," he said at last.

Tarkin thoughtfully pressed a knuckle to his lips as Vader slunk away into the shadows. It was oddly satisfying. Even with all of Tarkin's wiles brought to bear, it wasn't often that he got to watch Vader _fold._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have slightly updated the tags and one of them is "Please Do Not Have Darth Vader As A Houseguest," because, well, he is going to keep being Like This, sorry.
> 
> Also: this series continues to be canon-compliant as far as the movies go, but I might be moving into a slight AU about Tarkin's family because I had a plot bunny about it, which... is basically an AU plot bunny. As far as I can tell from snooping around looking things up, he doesn't have a known spouse/kids in Disney canon (I could be wrong in which case PLZ CORRECT); he does in Legends, but I don't want it to be exactly like the ones in Legends, because of reasons. (They're not very good reasons, honestly, and this isn't worth the amount of suspense I am putting into it, it's a pretty boring plot bunny but it fleshes out a few things that I wanted to flesh out in a particular way.)
> 
> I haven't decided yet if I will crib some of the Legends names/details or just... completely own that I'm haring off in a random direction and making shit up. I don't know. I haven't been doing fic long enough to know if there's a protocol for situations like this. DOES TRASHFIC HAVE PROTOCOLS. WHAT AM I EVEN DOING, BESIDES TRASH, I HAVE NO IDEA.


	5. Shadow Kraken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tarkin has a surprise prepared which he hopes will help Vader feel more at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Darth Vader gets confused about the banality of evil, because he himself is the very most un-banal kind.
> 
> BTW, with regards to Tarkin's past, I've decided to go with most of the names and general situations from Legends, but to change various details where I see fit. (For starters: everybody was poly the whole time, because this fic is my villain happy place and I said so. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ )

Tarkin oughtn't to have woken feeling so well-rested, but he did. His body had known what it needed and taken it unhesitatingly; all residual irritation, both from the slightly-past-bounds scene last night and the interruption later, had in the process drained away. Morning light streamed through the windows now, and he stretched and rolled out of bed easily enough. He applied sun protection, then dressed in a lightweight blue tunic and shorts cut off just above the knee; he planned to go outdoors today, perhaps to wade, or perhaps just dangle his feet in the water, depending how things went.

Vader had tried to take charge last night, but it was Tarkin's own plans that made him cheerful as he descended the stairs for breakfast. He'd come here hoping for a certain result, with Vader, and he knew just how he'd begin that effort today.

Tarkin hadn't wanted any of his servants here at the same time as Vader; he was feeling especially keen on privacy. But he'd had several of them visit beforehand to make preparations, including his cook, who had competently set him up with two nights' worth of appropriate meals. For instance, there was a loaf of still-reasonably-fresh bread on the counter. Tarkin cut himself two thick slices and popped them into a toaster while he started the caf brewing. With the addition of cane syrup, fresh fruit, and other odds and ends, this became a generous breakfast plate, which he carried out into the common room to eat in the rose-colored light of sunrise over the sea.

About halfway through the meal, just as he was considering getting out his datapad or a holobook, he heard Vader's heavy footsteps on the stairs.

"Good morning, Vader," he said, without looking up. "You don't mind if I finish eating here, do you?"

"No," said Vader, in a tone which Tarkin suspected meant _yes, but I will not stop you._ He glided in and sat on one of the couches.

"I did promise to show you around the island," Tarkin said between bites. "The weather looks good, so I thought perhaps we'd do that after breakfast. We've already seen the south shore, but there are other good views, and there's a dock on the eastern side that I think you might like."

"As you wish," said Vader, in a tone that sounded remarkably like disdain.

It hadn't escaped Tarkin's notice that Vader found this beach house offputting, even aside from the bin of toys. He'd expected that. Vader's usual haunts were designed, not only to distress visitors, but to remind Vader himself of what he was. It would be natural for the beach environment to feel somehow at odds with that, and for Vader to put up some resistance at first. Tarkin planned to carefully break that resistance down.

"Did you sleep well?" he inquired. "Apart from the incident with the door."

"I slept after that, yes." Vader looked around at the living room. Last night it had looked cozy, but the impression it made in the bright light of morning was even more idyllic, as the remnants of sunrise streamed in through that big window over the water. "There is something I do not understand."

"What would that be?" Tarkin asked blandly, taking his last few bites of fruit. He could guess, of course.

"How can you enjoy all... this?" Vader gestured around at the house and the perfect sunrise in general. "Knowing what we are?"

Ah; good. He'd identified the heart of the conflict already. Vader's self-hating streak was one of the parts of him Tarkin understood least, but he'd suspected it would surface. "Rightful rulers of large portions of the galaxy, you mean?"

"To rule anything with strength requires cruelty. You know this well; it is one of the things I respect about you. But if there is cruelty in this beach house, I have yet to find it."

Tarkin put down his plate and took a last sip of caf. "Vader, are you familiar with the concept of time off? Sometimes there's no one around who's being treasonous enough to need my immediate attention, and I feel like taking a moment to _enjoy_ all my ill-gotten gains. Maybe your religion makes you more effective when you punish yourself, but mine doesn't."

"You do not have a religion."

"The point stands." With the caf finished, Tarkin picked up his dishes and carried them to the mechanical cleaner in the kitchen. "I could be crueler to you," he said over his shoulder, "if that would help."

"That will not be necessary."

"I'm glad to hear it. Shall we?"

Without much more fuss, they made it out the door and onto the stone paths that cris-crossed the island. Tarkin smiled slightly to himself, noting how different it was from their excursion last night. The day was sunny and hot, although a bank of clouds had gathered on the far horizon; the morning's shift of birds and insects had taken up their calls. Tarkin was dressed and in control of things, and he had his blaster at his side. He set off in a different direction than last night's, wending along the shoreline, and Vader followed.

The dock that eventually rose into view was medium-small and connected to a rustic boathouse. Tarkin led Vader in there, mindful to stay off the sand. Under the shade of the flat roof, three small motorized vessels stood parked and tied in such a manner that they could easily be pushed into the bobbing waves. A smattering of tools, boat-engine parts, and general seaside accessories lay on wooden shelves or hung on hooks nearby, as did a few even smaller, paddle-driven craft.

"Here we are," said Tarkin briskly as he entered. "Do you see anything you like?"

Vader stopped in the entrance and looked from side to side with the surliness of a man who felt interested but didn't want to admit it. He'd been sulky all the way here, but Tarkin remained optimistic. "Why did you think these trivial craft would interest me?"

Tarkin shrugged, making a show of indifference which he knew Vader wouldn't believe. "I'm interested in helping you relax," he said. "Last visit, you said you liked to entertain yourself by tinkering in your workshop. I don't have much of that nature, either here or on Coruscant, but I do possess these, and you're welcome to enjoy yourself with them if you wish. Consider them fully replaceable."

Tinkering was not only an entertainment for Vader, but an entertainment he'd seemed ashamed of enjoying. Something about it not being useful to the Empire. Tarkin suspected Palpatine's hand in that, and he was eager to push back against it a little.

Vader gave him a suspicious glance, but he was already walking further into the shade to look at the boats more closely. "I am not a repairman for your third-rate pleasure craft. These two models are an insult to the concept of speedboats. They would not be capable of speed if they were thrown into hyperspace." He paused slightly at the third boat, smaller than the first two, pared-down and chrome-plated. "This one is... not terrible. But many years out of date. There are better versions on the market now."

Tarkin folded his arms, suppressing amusement. "It's been some years since I went boat shopping. There's a spare engine on the back shelf, too, if these don't serve." Natasi Daala had particularly liked that boat; for a moment, incongruously, he missed her. That had been perhaps his favorite relationship, certainly better than his actual marriage, but eventually she too had mostly moved on.

Vader stalked to the shelf and paused at the spare engine. Which was not, of course, a spare, though the servants had placed it well, making it indistinguishable at first glance from the older odds and ends around it.

"What is a brand-new Rothana w70," he asked suspiciously, "doing among these inferior vehicles? Or-" The engine floated up in the air and slowly turned, as Vader took a closer look. "This is not a w70. What is this?"

Tarkin could no longer resist the smug grin that spread across his face. "A prototype. From a new form of short-range hoverboat that the Tarkin Initiative is developing. Classified, of course, but I trust you."

Vader was so enthralled by the engine that he didn't even look up as he verbally sniped back. "You called me ridiculous for flying here in my Star Destroyer. This is far more ridiculous. You stole classified technology from your own Initiative?"

"I did not _steal_ it. The prototype had several redundant copies, so I requisitioned one for my personal study and had a servant place it here. It took extremely minor labor from perhaps two or three people to arrange. Your _Executor_ is still orbiting up there with a crew of, what, two thousand? All just cooling their heels?"

"Those with the requisite security clearance have shore leave. Were they not here, they would still be in a holding orbit around Mustafar." Vader ran the engine through a last slow rotation in the air, then lowered it. "I cannot modify this. It is nearly perfect; any further improvements would be beyond my skill level."

Tarkin raised his eyebrows, slightly disappointed. He'd hoped this would keep Vader genuinely entertained for the morning. "I'll inform my engineers that you approve. Should I get you something less good next time?"

"Not at all," Vader declared, gesturing to the chrome-plated boat he'd said was not terrible. "I am going to install it in your boat."

Tarkin straightened slightly. He'd said that the boats were replaceable, but... "Vader, that's not a boat engine, it's a hoverboat engine. Aren't the mechanisms different?"

"It will be a small adjustment; I can make it work. I used to podrace, remember?"

"That was a joke, I thought," said Tarkin, in minor despair. Of course, from the little he understood of podracing, this _was_ the sort of hare-brained thing that a racer would do. And the result would be a seagoing contraption that at least somewhat worked, until minor jostling caused the whole thing to fall apart or explode.

Well, he _had_ said the boats were replaceable: he was on a mission to lure Vader into calming down a bit, and this was acceptable collateral. It had never actually been Natasi's boat. Besides, she was even deeper into Imperial R&D these days than he was; in the unlikely event that she learned about this, she'd probably find it hilarious.

Vader had already opened the boat's hood and was telekinetically mucking around inside. Tarkin calmly walked to a portion of the dock where he could sit and watch. He took off his sandals, placing them neatly beside him, and dangled his feet down off the side, letting the warm waves lap at them. After a minute, he took out _Sea Life of Scarif_  from his pocket and started to read. This could still be a perfectly relaxing morning for both of them.

"I forget," Vader said, several pages of colorful fish later and elbow-deep in engine parts, "that you require conversation. Do you wish me to speak to you while I work?"

"If you like," said Tarkin, flipping a virtual page. He'd already read the holobook several times, but there was something soothing about it.

"Last night you asked me to try to shock you."

Tarkin raised his eyebrows, not entirely looking up from the holobook. "That's not exactly how I would have characterized that conversation, but fair."

Vader wasn't looking up from the boat engine, either. "Did you know I have murdered children?"

That... was not the variety of shock Tarkin had expected. If Vader had said it as a goad - or, worse, a boast - he might have gotten angry. But it was curiously flat, baldly stated, entirely serious.

Interesting that he'd led with that. Perhaps Tarkin had guessed wrong, before, about why Vader might find his bin of children's toys disturbing.

"I'm not sure," he said, keeping his eyes blandly on his holobook, "but it doesn't surprise me. You murder a lot of people."

"My Inquisitors scour the galaxy even now, hunting for children with undiagnosed Force sensitivities who might one day pose a threat."

"Vader," said Tarkin, flipping a page, "if you're confessing to war crimes because you want to discuss them, I'm happy to. But if you're trying to get a reaction from me, it's the wrong tactic. Who do you think half the crimes in the book are named for?"

This was a slight exaggeration. There weren't many war crimes named for Tarkin, specifically. But nearly half the ones in recent galactic history had been invocations of the Tarkin Doctrine - either explicitly, or as an after-the-fact defense. So it was close enough.

"Then you would prefer an amoral shock," said Vader.

Tarkin looked at Vader sidelong. "I'm not sure _prefer_ is the right word. You're the one who decided to take this as a challenge."

"Are you aware how my meditation chambers work?"

"Vaguely. I've arranged the installation of several, after all."

"At my fortress the procedure is considerably more complex."

Tarkin had suspected that, and had been somewhat curious; it would explain why Vader had been late to get up, those mornings. "Really? Do tell."

"At my fortress, that medical droid whom you so dislike takes my suit off of me completely. My body is hideous underneath, practically a corpse. She removes all four of my prosthetic limbs and transfers my life support to a bacta tank. It takes an hour to do properly. I sleep there every night when I am at home, hanging in my tank like livestock on a hook. It is the only time I ever feel comfortable."

"Interesting," Tarkin said, with equal blandness. It _was_ interesting; he'd assumed something medical and involved, but he hadn't known details, and Tarkin had the sort of mind that always looked for details to file away. He'd known some of Vader's limbs were prosthetics, for instance, but he hadn't realized it was all of them. "I'm sorry to have taken you away from that, then."

He was not, however, shocked. Tarkin had seen his share of gruesome battlefield injuries and their various aftermaths. He didn't _enjoy_ such things, but when one got down to it, they were simply another part of war. There was no point recoiling.

"I mean it," Vader added, "when I say I am hideous. All you have seen of my current form is this mask, which was not even crafted by me. You would not want me anymore if you saw my true face."

Tarkin raised an eyebrow. "I doubt that; it would be rather shallow of me. But outside very specialized containment chambers, you can't breathe without the mask anyway, so it's moot. I like the way you look, Vader. I've said so before. It's never bothered me knowing you're injured underneath."

He understood very well what Vader was doing. He was testing this new relationship's bounds, just as he had last night: new kinks, new tentative tenderness, new questions. And, at the moment, new ways to sulk and be upsetting. He felt a bond with Tarkin, but he didn't trust it not to break, and he didn't know what it would or wouldn't hold. Better to find that out quickly than to wonder.

Tarkin had seen such reactions before, in people who'd been lonely or badly treated a long time, and Force knew Vader had been both of those things. It would eventually pass. Tarkin planned to ride it out with neither encouragement nor anger.

"Of course it has bothered you," Vader retorted. "It bothered you for years. You did not even think I was capable of sex, due to my injuries, until I proved to you otherwise. Remember?"

Stars, Tarkin had nearly forgotten that. He put a hand to his lips thoughtfully, regarding Vader. Only eight months since they'd first been together, and his old way of thinking of Vader had already become alien to him. "That's true, come to think of it. But I like to think I've learned from my past oversights. Has that been troubling you?"

"Not at all." There was a loud clank as Vader appeared to accidentally drop or snap something, and he looked over at Tarkin in annoyance. "Also, I am ruining your boat. To which you appear to have some emotional attachment."

All right, that was enough. Tarkin closed the holobook and got up, walking back up the dock to where Vader was. "Vader, you've been in a terrible sulk all morning, and I'd like to know why. Do you wish me to be displeased with you?"

Vader telekinetically shoved something back into place, or further out of place, in the guts of the boat with a clatter. "I do not _want_ it. But it is inevitable."

Tarkin folded his arms. "Did you foresee that? With the Force? Is there some new secret Sith plan that I'm not going to like? Or are you simply assuming it?"

"It is not the Force; there are no plans; it is _obvious_. You wish to fit me into this life you have here. Pretty beaches, lazy breakfasts, comfortable sitting rooms - that is not what I _am._ I have been trying to tell you."

Tarkin was uncomfortably reminded of their last visit, when Vader had started out by calling Tarkin a fool for arriving. This was honestly a step forward, though. At least Vader was talking about the real problem instead of blaming him.

He let his voice gentle slightly. "Perhaps I should have explained something, then. I invited you here knowing it might be a difficult adjustment. I'm not disappointed that you're struggling, merely interested in the outcome of the struggle. I'd like to... help you adjust to a wider variety of roles, I suppose."

"That will not happen. I have only one role."

Really? Tarkin thought sardonically. Which role did he mean? The murder, the sex, or the sulking? Because at least two of those were entirely compatible with a beach setting.

"Try thinking of it this way," he instructed instead. "You said last night that you're interested in my worst tendencies. Why not classify this as one of them? Here I am, indulging in salt water and sunlight and nice breakfasts when we both know what I've done to countless worlds. That's not me denying what I am. It's simply another sin of mine. A form of hypocrisy, in which I'd like you to join me."

Vader regarded him silently for the space of a few breaths. Then he turned his attention back to the boat and made a couple of final adjustments, more gently.

"This nearly works," he said, "but your boathouse is under-equipped, and I will need parts you do not appear to possess."

"That's fine. Send me a list and I'll order them for you, if you're coming back again later."

"We will see." Vader stood fluidly and regarded Tarkin. "What is it you have been reading? A holobook about... fish?"

Tarkin picked up _Sea Life of Scarif_ and proffered it. "After a fashion. I've been vacationing here for years, but I realized I didn't know as much about the local life forms as I should. It's a very relaxing read."

"Life forms," said Vader, walking closer to glance at the book - and then, meaningfully, at Tarkin's holstered blaster. "Monsters, you mean."

"Remarkably few of those, as it turns out. This planet is quite tame."

"Yet you look over your shoulder for them," Vader said softly, "when we go outdoors. You arm yourself, just in case. I know why."

Tarkin looked up into Vader's mask. It was sometimes eerie, Vader being able to read him even more thoroughly than he read Vader.

"I'll get over it," he responded, equally soft.

Vader's mask tilted, and then he reached for Tarkin, casually. "Well, my hypocrite. Shall I pretend to be gentle with you this morning? Shall I be sweet?"

Tarkin felt the ghost of a grin cross his face. "I'd like to see you try."

*

 **_Shadow Kraken:_ ** _This rare and dangerous creature lives in the deepest parts of Scarif's oceans, rarely venturing up into visible light. Occasionally, when deep-dwelling prey grows scarce, it ventures to the surface. At least two famous shipwrecks in Scarif's history have been confirmed as the shadow kraken's doing, having mistaken the ship for a giant alqapin or other source of food. Due to its size and the unusual properties of its flesh, the shadow kraken cannot survive close to shore, but its presence remains a real problem for humanoids venturing out into the open sea. Many of Scarif's cargo shippers carry turbolasers on their craft, partially to repel pirates, but also ready to swivel down and shoot into the sea itself, just in case this should be the voyage on which the uncommon and unthinkable occurs._

*

Tarkin was a hypocrite for more than one reason, Vader thought, as he wrapped a light Force restraint around Tarkin's body. He'd rebuffed gentleness last night when he needed it, but he demanded it now, for reasons Vader only vaguely understood.

But Vader could be this, for a while, if it was what Tarkin wanted. Vader was made of darkness; he could not lighten himself. But he could be the slow rot within an outwardly healthy branch, the teeming knothole suddenly exposed in the whitewashed wall. He could pretend at gentleness.

Palpatine had used to pretend that way, after all, when he sat in the Supreme Chancellor's office with his false kindly smile. And if Palpatine could do it, then by definition, it wasn't out of bounds for a Sith.

"Relax, then," he instructed. "You are in no danger here."

He focused in on Tarkin's senses, taking his time. Lighter than usual, little more than a series of feathery caresses, inching their way from his head to his toes. He felt the echo of how the sunlight looked to Tarkin: Vader's mask had automatically corrected the light levels, bringing everything down to a reddish dimness that his injured eyes could tolerate, but to Tarkin the blue brightness of the sky and the glint on the water were pleasant things, and Vader quietly soaked up that pleasantness. He lingered on the areas of Tarkin's body that he already knew were sensitive, explored each individual crevice's response. And he felt Tarkin's mental reaction: a wariness, even as he relaxed into it. He knew Vader well enough to know he was up to something.

"How would you like me to take you?" Vader inquired. "Lying somewhere comfortable, perhaps? Standing, so that we face each other? Sitting, or kneeling, and looking out at the water? I can give you whatever you ask."

Tarkin looked at Vader sidelong; he expected a trap, hah. Good. This question wasn't where the trap lay. He felt the subtle mental movement as Tarkin searched for an answer that Vader might not have already planned for.

"That boat's got a comfortable back seat," Tarkin said at last, gesturing with slight mischief to the speedboat Vader liked least. An awful, slow, bulky little thing. "Why don't you lay me down in there?"

"As you wish," said Vader.

He picked Tarkin up gently and Force-carried him over to that part of the boathouse. He took his time, holding Tarkin in the air above the well-cushioned seat and carefully stripping away his clothes. Just one layer at a time, with little nips and caresses interspersed generously between them. The belt with its attached blaster, which Vader secreted in the front seat, just out of Tarkin's reach; the tunic; the short trousers, which Vader privately thought had looked silly on him anyway.

By the time he had a reason to tug away Tarkin's undergarments, Tarkin had genuinely begun to let go of his wariness. "That's... good," he murmured, his eyes fluttering half-shut. "That's surprisingly good."

Vader laid him down carefully in the boat's back seat. He shifted him a bit until he'd found the most comfortable position, reclined with his head pillowed on the armrest and his knees slightly bent. This boat wasn't a complete waste, Vader supposed. It might be terrible for crossing water with any level of speed or precision, but it was built with comfort in mind, spacious and yielding.

Yielding the way Tarkin's knees yielded, opening ever so slightly further when Vader sent a flutter of Force-energy between them. He let his gentle touch find Tarkin's still-soft but thickening cock; he'd been at it long enough now to become curious how _that_ would feel, and the small sweet rush of pleasure did not disappoint him.

"I wish to give you pleasure," Vader murmured, mindful that Tarkin would, as always, want him to narrate his actions. "Just like this."

He gave a few soft, slow strokes down there, letting himself tease at every little vein and crevice. Not too much, though. It would be best if Vader took his time, and if he did too much of this, he wouldn't want to go slow anymore.

He returned to the rest of Tarkin's body instead. He let the texture of his Force-touch change, from something like downy feathers to something more like the rise and fall of the sea, rippling warmly and slowly up and down Tarkin's skin. He felt more than heard Tarkin's contented sigh in response.

This felt good to Vader, too, inevitably. He rarely had a chance to experience a body so tranquil and slack, except in sex's immediate aftermath. His own body, fucked-up as it was, never quite got to that state anymore. He had an urge to just stay like this. To work at his lover gently and slowly, to undo every little knot in his tall wiry body, to bring him off with the lightest touch while he lay half-asleep with bliss, to the sound of the waves, all resistance gone. To let it be nothing but that.

But he wouldn't be a rot within a branch, if he did it that way. He wouldn't be Sith-like at all.

"This is your own territory, isn't it?" he murmured, adding the lightest kneading motions between Tarkin's shoulder-blades. He'd felt where the usual stubborn points of tension persisted here, and he found those points now, prompting a small pleasure-sound from Tarkin's lips. "A planet entirely tamed. Order and peace." As the Imperial saying went: bringing order and peace to the galaxy. Through the use of tools as terrible as Vader himself.

"Mm," said Tarkin sleepily. "Yes."

He let his impromptu massage travel downwards, as the rest of his Force-touch continued its warm, rhythmic ripple. He let all of it move in time to the sound of his breath. As if Vader himself was the sea. He let himself enjoy that mental image, in all its absurdity - he more typically imagined himself as lava, or flame - until he reached the small of Tarkin's back, the subtle curve of his hips. A nice thing about using the Force was that one didn't have to worry much about configuration; Tarkin could lie belly-up like this, sinking into the seat cushions, and it would be no impediment to anything Vader felt like doing from behind or underneath him.

"Do you want me here?" he asked, in the same soft tone.

"I do," Tarkin murmured, his eyes shutting all the way. His arousal had grown, little by little, over these long minutes, and Vader slipped between his legs again, teasing across his perineum and balls, to cradle his firm length.

"Do you trust me?" he asked.

Tarkin opened one eye, a smile quirking the corner of his mouth. "Hardly."

Vader realized, with a small pang, that for some illogical reason he'd expected a "yes." He'd _wanted_ a "yes," and then he'd wanted to give Tarkin a reason to regret it.

"That is wise," he said.

He felt Tarkin brace himself slightly. He expected Vader to lash out with sudden pain, now that he'd admitted that this wasn't all it seemed. But Vader didn't yet. He kept up all of his existing gentle rhythms, until the moment passed, and he felt Tarkin relax back. If he'd tried to move, he would have felt Vader holding him firm: all of him now, not just the initial soft press holding his arms to his sides. But he didn't. That, much as he'd refused to admit it, was itself a show of trust.

"Yet you welcome me in," Vader continued. "I enjoy that. I enjoy the way you give yourself to me."

He stroked Tarkin's cock just a minute longer, letting him settle, and then he refocused elsewhere, started something new. A slow series of small firm presses, much like the ones he'd just been using for a massage, randomly across all of Tarkin's body as the Force-waves lapped it. Tarkin stirred slightly, radiating a mild curiosity, but the feeling didn't worry him, yet.

He held back, letting the change go more gradually than he wanted it to. Firmer, harder-edged, just a little bit more and more over time, until without any specific moment of transition the touches had grown _sharp._ Little Force-jaws, nipping at Tarkin's body with their teeth.

Tarkin took longer to react than Vader had expected. But then, Tarkin liked pain, and he was so bonelessly relaxed right now. There were actual, not-kinky massage techniques that involved slight sharpness or momentary pain; perhaps he imagined the teeth, at first, as something like that. Vader let him think it, for now. He held back and let the pain increase gradually. Slowly. Let the jaws grow imperceptibly larger, minute by minute.

At last, something did get Tarkin strongly enough that he gasped slightly, opened his eyes. He looked up at Vader, not with surprise or betrayal, but with a knowing smile.

" _There_ you are," he murmured. "I was wondering how long you'd hold back."

"This is not all of it," Vader warned.

"I'd expect not," said Tarkin. Indulgent, lazy, even as Vader worked another gasp out of him with a bite to his thigh. "You did inform me you were only going to pretend."

Vader went for a bigger bite, hard and crushing, at the back of Tarkin's neck. Tarkin hissed in a deeper breath through his teeth, and his body did react this time, trying fruitlessly for movement.

"You are so concerned about monsters," Vader murmured. "I wonder, sometimes, if you have forgotten that I am one."

He reached down with the Force and gave another slow, gentle stroke, as more of those big teeth bit down, at Tarkin's shoulders, his sides. He felt a mental shift, a response Tarkin nearly said aloud and seemed to decide against, but Vader could decipher its essence.

"Or is that why you are drawn to me?" he murmured. That _was_ consistent with all that they'd done before. Tarkin admired all of Vader's sharpest edges, even the ones that he tried to discourage. "Tell me, have you ever loved anything but weapons and monsters?"

There was a sardonic edge in Tarkin's gaze, even as he twitched in Vader's grasp. "You know why I'm not going to answer that."

Vader, guiltily, did. He remembered the awkward conversation they'd had last night.

No reason to dwell on _that_ , though. Not when Tarkin lay bare and willing beneath him. Vader redoubled his efforts, slipping a small slick tendril of Force-touch deeper between Tarkin's legs, inside of him. "I will assume, then. I know what it is you came here wanting, and it was not merely sunlight and waves."

He'd thought he'd known how this would go, a pretty veneer breaking to expose the rot underneath. But Tarkin had already been in the rot with him, waiting. Tarkin was made of darkness, too. It had been _Vader_ who'd forgotten that.

He dived in all the deeper. Teeth that felt as if they broke skin, sank into muscle. Bites within bites. A complex agony that built and built, over minutes, until Tarkin's small urgent noises of pain-pleasure rose to actual groans. Sharp grunts, sometimes, when one of them hit a particular nerve. And on, more, towards a breaking point that Vader knew very well would not arrive, while he fucked Tarkin slowly through the pain.

"Shall I devour you, lover?" he growled. "Shall I strip the flesh from your bones?"

Tarkin's grin back was fierce now, feral. "Do your worst."

Last night, when they'd waded deep into the surf, Vader had taken Tarkin's defiance away. Without it, the scene had proved overwhelming. But now he had it back, and Vader could feel more clearly than ever how it anchored him, how even these simple ways of talking back filled him with pleasure and power. Vader wasn't only filling Tarkin with sensation; Vader was making him strong.

He kept going. The pain built and built. The pleasure built with it, a slow slick merciless rhythm, and he murmured fierce nothings about monsters and darkness and teeth. Finally something inside Tarkin buckled, and his body gave a last deep clench. He came with a cry that echoed out over the water, a long pleasure-spasm that drained away only slowly, in pulses, like the waves.

Vader watched Tarkin, in what was now the very late-morning light, as he caught his breath, sweat-sticky and melting into the seat where he lay.

"I liked that," Tarkin said, looking at the boathouse's ceiling lightheadedly. "I should make you slow down more often."

Vader reluctantly pulled his senses back out of him, returning to his regular body, which had been standing on the dock, making small Force-guiding motions with its hands and otherwise doing nothing much. It too, though, felt more relaxed than when this had started. Perhaps there _was_ a point to going slow.

"Shall I wrap another blanket around you?" Vader teased. "In the name of hypocrisy?"

"Oh, don't you start." Tarkin, after a few false starts, extended his arms and pulled himself upright. Vader absently floated a cloth over to him, and he cleaned the worst of the mess off himself and the boat seat before finding his clothes and starting to pull them back on. He frowned, pausing as he fastened his shorts, and peered out at the square of sky and water visible at the boathouse's other end. "Is it getting more overcast?"

Vader glanced out at the sky. A bank of darkish clouds was gathering at one side of the sky. "I had not checked. It appears that way."

"That looks like perhaps a non-trivial storm." Tarkin glanced back in at the interior of the boathouse, which was still half-strewn with evidence of the abortive engine installation, and sighed. "Under normal circumstances, I would insist that you clean up after yourself, but at this particular moment I think we should get back to the house."

"I will clean up later," Vader carelessly promised. He could tell Tarkin didn't believe him, but Tarkin slipped back into his blue tunic and sandals anyway, and led him back along the coast the way they'd came, as the first fat drops of rain began to fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Given the "kraken" bit and the general "nobody here but us monsters" theme, my outline for this chapter definitely involved Force tentacles. But I got a few paragraphs in and realized it was profoundly Not Doing It For Me, so I backtracked and did it this way instead. You're welcome for the mental image, though.


	6. Bathygnathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pleasant mood from out by the dock doesn't last long. Cooped up in the beach house together and distracted by various difficulties, Vader and Tarkin find their tempers running high.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sighs heavily, stomps into the fic in performative annoyance*
> 
> look, according to the OUTLINE these murderboys were supposed to spend a NICE FLUFFY CHAPTER playing a strategy game together while it rained. there were going to be jokes about their respective approaches to strategy! it was going to be FUN but instead we ended up with THIS
> 
> *drops fic on the ground, throws up hands, stomps off again*
> 
> (but seriously, shout out to liz_mo for getting me thinking about the sea life book as a source of suspense, and about the need to push Tarkin just a little bit more; and to Spooky-Spaghetties for prompting thoughts about what being a monster or person even means to these characters, as well as slightly more details about Vader's medical stuff. I don't generally let comments drive the fic, but in this case it probs would have been even harder to figure out where the heck this chapter needed to go without you guys.)

By the time they returned to the beach house, it was raining significantly. Vader didn't seem affected by it; presumably his suit kept him dry, just as it had last night when they'd waded in the sea. Tarkin made a beeline upstairs to rinse and dry himself. Vader vanished off to his room as well, to take care of his nutrient packs or whatever else he was medically required to do now. It was about lunchtime.

Scarif had a typhoon season, but this wasn't the time of year for it; this was merely an ordinary storm. It didn't worry Tarkin over-much, as he toweled off listening to it drum on the roof.

Vader hadn't returned by the time Tarkin made his way back downstairs. He checked the weather forecast again, just to be sure, and then fixed himself a sandwich and another mug of caf, looking out at the sheets of rain and the heavy waves beyond them.

As he ate, he thought idly about Vader. Whatever Vader was doing now was probably somewhat involved, and what he'd described earlier, with the bacta tanks, was even more so. Tarkin felt neither disgust nor pity when he thought of it. But he understood why Vader might dislike it, or feel self-conscious, or expect other people to be repelled. Tarkin hoped, in time, that Vader would begin to trust him not to be.

He'd seen Vader's nutrient packs before, and the smaller packets of medicine, and the sealed containers of fluids and electrolytes, lined up neatly in their boxes ready for use. He'd never seen what it actually looked like when Vader ingested them. Was _ingested_ the right word? Vader had called it  _loading_ them, like material fed into a machine.

One day, perhaps, he'd feel comfortable doing that in front of Tarkin, and then they'd get to have meals together. When Vader felt ready.

But at the moment Tarkin had a very adequate sandwich to eat, and the rain to watch, and the satisfying feeling of having made Vader happy for a while.

*

**_Snapshell:_ ** _These small molluscs gather on the edges of natural outcroppings, as well as on piers. Encased in the razor-sharp shells that grant their name, they live passive lives, opening themselves enough to allow crumbs of nutrient to drift in on the current. When threatened, or when tasting an irresistibly large and delicious morsel, the snapshell shuts itself in a fraction of a second. This sudden movement can slice through the flesh of any larger creatures foolish enough to have reached in. The approach of a predator near a group of snapshells results in a distinctive rattle-like noise as one frightened shell after another snaps tight._

*

Vader was not happy. He'd briefly had a pleasant time in that boathouse, and he'd thought he relaxed. But now that he wasn't focused on sunlight and pleasure and the feeling of teeth - now that he was standing next to the absurd bulk of the meditation chamber, wrestling with a nutrient pack that didn't want to connect to its port - he felt as out-of-place and monstrous as ever.

He didn't belong here. He'd listed things that he thought might shock Tarkin, and Tarkin had pretended nonchalance but gotten annoyed soon enough. And that hadn't been all of the list. Vader hadn't touched the topics Tarkin dared him to bring up last night - his old self's marriage, his almost-family. He would never be ready for those. Tarkin was ready to talk about his side, but Vader would rather jump into the sea and not surface.

He twisted the nutrient pack further in its port, trying to make it connect. This wasn't normally difficult, but one of the problems he'd contracted during his recent mission was an infection around the site where the primary nutrient port connected to his digestive system. The whole nutritional apparatus was now intermittently acting up. He'd need to replace several parts once he finished his course of antibiotics.

Finally he heard the expected click, and felt the nutrient transfer working with only slightly more discomfort than usual. He hadn't spilled or broken anything, so that made it better than some of his meals, these past few weeks. He was glad Tarkin could not see him. The only thing worse than being half-machine was being a _malfunctioning_ half-machine.

Vader's disability had been _two_ of the items on that list of shocking things. Tarkin had insisted that he did not mind it; that he would be shallow if he did. Vader had his doubts about that. Vader minded most of this quite a bit himself. Did that make _him_  shallow?

He was familiar with the line of argument, though. He'd seen it happen before, to submissives who were catching feelings, or who had nursemaid fantasies to start out with. They got fixated on wanting to see him under the armor. Wanting - usually earnestly, usually with good intentions - to show that they liked all of him, even his scarred face. Vader didn't want his submissives to do that. He wanted them to fear him and crave him and give him something distracting to do between the deaths he dealt, that was all.

But Tarkin wasn't the rest of Vader's submissives. And Tarkin _knew_ it, which was the infuriating thing. He'd already started trying to manage Vader in the direction of sharing more. Setting little traps, like the one from last night. Insisting pointedly that he'd listen to anything Vader confessed.

Tarkin might say he accepted Vader as he was, but truly Tarkin wanted him to bend. To open every part of himself Tarkin wanted open, to soften every part of himself Tarkin wanted soft. And what was Tarkin offering in return? Would  _he_  bend? That scene last night had bent him, but only on his own terms and by accident; he'd talked Vader down considerably from what Vader had originally planned. Vader didn't know how to do the reverse, how to talk Tarkin's demands to a reasonable size, when Tarkin saw nothing unreasonable about them.

_We did agree that this wasn't going to be one-sided,_ Tarkin had said, but Tarkin was the one who judged both sides, who decided what it should look like when they balanced out.

Vader clicked the noontime fluid and medicine packs into their places, fortunately without further incident. He waited for them to drain into his system, then detached their emptied husks and disposed of them. That was all he'd needed to do up here. He could go back downstairs if he wanted to. He'd already spent longer up here than planned, and he could dimly feel Tarkin below him, wondering where he was, reaching idly for a distraction.

If Vader didn't want to go back down there, he could call for his shuttle and leave. He'd told Tarkin he could do that, and Tarkin had agreed.

Was that what Tarkin counted on? That, if things got overwhelming, Vader would just safeword out of the entire weekend? It seemed inelegant.

Besides, Vader didn't want to leave. He didn't want to hide himself from Tarkin forever. There'd been a moment, back in the heat of Mustafar, when Vader had felt as though Tarkin saw all of him, in his full darkness, and wanted him still. Tarkin had been irresistible in that moment. _Hope_ had been irresistible, even as Vader feared he might be Tarkin's death. He wanted to feel all those things again.

He'd just have to get to it _his_ way. Otherwise, he felt, Tarkin's expectations might swallow him whole.

*

**_Bathygnathe._ ** _This fish, growing to about six feet long, is one of the most common predators of Scarif's pelagic zone. It is easily identified by its distinctive jaw, pictured here, lined with protruding, knifelike teeth. The bathygnathe is not as intelligent as its mammalian counterpart, the toothed alqapin. But what a school of bathygnathe lacks in cleverness, it makes up for in aggression. Like other pelagic predators, the bathygnathe rarely ventures close to shore, but sailors experiencing difficulties in more open areas frequently find a school of bathygnathe circling below the water's surface, anticipating a meal._

*

When Vader did return downstairs, Tarkin had finished his meal and was fiddling with the holodesk, flicking through a dense file of biology jargon, coordinates, and numbers. He was so absorbed he didn't look up, although Vader could feel that he'd heard his footsteps over the drum of the rain.

"Something fascinates you," Vader observed, reaching Tarkin's side and peering down. "It is not work, I hope."

"I suppose it's technically work; the Tarkin Initiative administrates this planet, so if there _was_ a problem, it would be under my purview. But no. It's just something nagging at me."

The jargon and numbers rolled by. Vader didn't understand them, but there were a lot of the archaic, two-word names that often referred to animal species. "Monsters again?"

Tarkin looked up at him, with the distracted intensity of a man explaining a conspiracy theory. Of course, at the Empire's high levels, sometimes the conspiracies were real. "A team of Imperial field scientists surveys Scarif's wildlife and natural hazards on a yearly basis. They're the ones who ensure no records are in harm's way in the typhoon season, for instance. This is their most recent report on sea life. It's very technical, and I don't fully understand it, but there are parts that don't seem to match the holobook."

"How unexpected," Vader said dryly, "that a holobook written for mass entertainment could be inaccurate."

Tarkin's lip curled in brief amusement. "Was that sarcasm? You're hardly ever sarcastic. But look here." He pointed at a list which was, to Vader, no more comprehensible than the others. "According to the holobook, the apex predator of this ocean is the shadow kraken. But I can't find it mentioned. You wouldn't expect it near the coasts, of course, but this is a report from the appropriate deeps and there's still nothing. Its favorite prey is the giant alqapin, and these appear in reasonable numbers, but there's still no-"

"There is no need for this," Vader interrupted. He'd come down here intending to push back against Tarkin's demands, to make things harder. But the anxiety he felt from Tarkin now was almost... cute. "If a discrepancy in the records concerns you, the report's authors can be made to explain."

Vader could just picture how that would go, the Grand Moff of the entire Outer Rim demanding an audience with two quavering minor scientists to ask why their report's details weren't like the ones in his silly holobook. He hoped Tarkin would see the absurdity in it, too.

"It doesn't make sense," Tarkin muttered, leaning closer to the display. "Maybe I'll call Thrawn. _He'd_ know how to interpret a detail like-"

"You are _not_ calling Grand Admiral Thrawn from his military duties to investigate a trivial matter regarding fish."

Tarkin looked up at him mulishly. "I could if I wanted to. I have the authority."

"Tarkin. Stand up."

Tarkin hesitated, confused by the order. But he'd pursued this neurosis long enough, and Vader knew its real origin. If Tarkin wasn't self-aware enough to stop, Vader would need to take matters into his own hands.

He pulled Tarkin out of his chair with the Force, swept him up unwillingly, so they stood facing each other. Tarkin struggled slightly, more out of petulance than real distress, as thunder rolled in the distance. Vader took a hold of him physically, his actual hands wrapping lightly around Tarkin's forearms.

"I don't know what you're doing," Tarkin protested, "but I don't need-"

"It is time that you stopped hunting shadows," said Vader, speaking over him. "What happened on Mustafar is over. I will not allow any monster to hurt you again. I will not allow _anything_ to hurt you."

He was surprised by the vehemence in his voice. He'd had to stand by and do nothing, on Palpatine's orders, when the lava monster attacked, and that had nearly broken something in him. He wasn't doing it again, he realized abruptly. Not on orders from _anyone_. Once was enough.

He'd meant it as an ordinary reassurance, but all at once it felt like a thought too big to hold, too big to think about.

Tarkin attempted again to pull away. Vader had dropped his Force-hold, and only had him by the forearms, but he was still by far the stronger of the two. "I don't need to be under your _protection,_ Vader. I have plenty of security forces of my own. I'm not-"

_Not some fainting damsel,_ came the thought unbidden between them. Tarkin had stopped himself before saying it aloud, but it was there anyway, oddly clear, as almost-spoken thoughts sometimes were.

Tarkin _had_ expected Vader's protection on Mustafar; he had been enraged when it did not arrive. If he rejected it now, it was for the same reason that he'd rebuffed Vader's attempts at comfort last night. He was proud; he didn't want to admit his need. He wanted it on his own terms. And he didn't understand the magnitude of what Vader had really offered.

It made Vader angrier than he cared to admit.

"Not what?" he growled, holding Tarkin fast. "Not in the habit of using weapons for their intended purpose?"

" _Using_ a weapon is different from - Vader, this is ridiculous, let _go_ of me."

"You wish to use me, then? But not to accept what I do of my own free will?"

"Let go of me, I said."

"I will let go," said Vader, "when you tell me that you do not want me merely as a thing you can use. A monster. _Your_ monster. A leashed power that you control like your other toys."

Tarkin did want that, he thought. The way Palpatine did. To have Vader's whole self at his feet. To tell him when to attack, what to protect, when to sit, when to heel.

When to stand absolutely still, while the unthinkable occurred.

Tarkin had gone cold and abrupt, the way he did when Vader scared him. "Vader, this is ridiculous. I've spent this entire visit trying to give you space _not_ to be a monster. What else do you think was the purpose of-"

His voice cut off as Vader tightened his grip, pulling him in closer by the arms. Vader could feel more than see him wince. "You want me docile when you order it and monstrous when you will. That was your only purpose. Tell me otherwise, or I will call down my shuttle and leave you here."

Tarkin stilled, at that. Became calculating, as Tarkin sometimes did, when a new aspect of a problem was brought to his attention.

"That's what this is about," he said, the defensive anger gone from his voice. "All this time, while you complained about this beach house, I thought it was only because you felt unworthy. But it's not just that, is it? It's about power."

Vader let go. He watched as Tarkin took a step back, unconsciously rubbing at his forearms where Vader had gripped him.

"Everything has always been about that," said Vader. "When I have power over you, we negotiate. We agree what form it will take and how I will comfort you if you are overwhelmed. When you want to use _your_ power, when you want me vulnerable or confessing my feelings, when you order me to back down, we do not negotiate that. You corral me because, for all of your playing at submission, that is how you really want me. Broken and tamed like a beast."

Tarkin probably thought the look he gave Vader was careful and calculating, as a bolt of lightning flashed and illuminated them both. In fact it was one of the least confident looks Vader had ever seen on that pinched face. He looked - he _felt_ \- lost.

"No, Vader," he said, so softly that Vader had to strain to hear him over the drumming rain. "That's not why. When I try to corral you, it's because I'm worried you might actually kill me if I don't."

Vader stared at him, feeling a roil he did not know how to express. Tarkin stared back, equally unable to say anything more.

Abruptly Vader turned on his heel and stalked to the window, coming to a halt against that long plane of glass, looking out at the storm. He wanted to break something. Tarkin had already ordered him not to destroy any more property, but he wanted to.

Tarkin was right, of course; Vader _wasn't_ safe. That was the one thing he could never be, no matter how he pretended. Vader was made of rage and pain and the Dark Side; he'd lost so much of himself already. There wasn't another option. He'd learned that _long_ ago.

*

**_Saberfish_ ** _. This graceful eel is named for its bioluminescent, color-changing appearance. At its brightest, the saberfish can glow the blue or green of an ancient Jedi weapon. Subtler colorations are also common, which the saberfish uses for communication, mate selection, camouflage, and competitive displays. Pictured here are saberfish in several visual configurations: the blinding blue from which it takes its name; a dark mottled camouflaging pattern; a striking white and violet zigzag whose adaptive purpose is still unknown; and the elaborate, sunset-like rose-gold pattern of courtship._

*

Tarkin watched, his mind racing, as the lightning flashed and glinted off Vader's armor. He had not expected this. Long before they'd gotten sexually involved, Tarkin had prided himself on his Theory Of Dealing With Vader. The calmly assertive control that had kept him safe and alive around Vader where others failed. It had never occurred to him that Vader might _object_ to his having a Theory. That he'd notice it, and that he'd object to being managed in that way. That he'd feel threatened by it, even.

He wasn't sure what Vader expected him to _do._ He could not very well discard the Theory, not without putting himself at unacceptable risk.

But then, he wasn't sure Vader was asking him to do that. Vader hadn't actually asked anything that made sense.

"What would you rather do with this weekend?" Tarkin asked, as casually as he could, sinking into one of the chairs. "The boundaries that I set for my own safety aren't negotiable, but my other plans can be discussed. I made them because I thought they would help, that's all."

Vader didn't turn from the window. "Nothing will help me."

"Don't be-" Tarkin started, and then swallowed his words again. He'd been about to say _don't be melodramatic._ But that would be scolding Vader over a non-safety-related matter, and he'd just said that he wasn't going to do that.

Vader lived a melodramatic life. Tarkin didn't _like_ it, but he could assume that the drama was a fumbling attempt to communicate something.

"You don't believe you can do it, do you?" he asked, more thoughtfully. "You don't think you can act in the way I demand. Or you don't think you can be happy that way."

One of Vader's hands flexed in seeming frustration, out and into a fist and back out again. "When are you not making demands? You demand that I come here. You demand that I follow your rules. You demand that I be gentle. You demand that I help you, comfort and protect you, but only when you choose and when it does not hurt your pride. You are made of demands."

Tarkin sharply pinched the bridge of his nose, suppressing a whole series of unhelpful retorts. _Yes, Vader, that's called being equals in a relationship. It's called doing things properly. It's called actually being considerate to one's-_

But he was starting to see the shape of this, and it wasn't a shape Tarkin's sharp tongue could unravel.

That was what scared him most, he realized. Not that Vader would hurt him - Tarkin took calculated risks with things that could hurt him all the time. But that Vader might not, in the end, be a challenge he was capable of meeting.

He let his hand drop back down from his face.

"Yes, I am," he said shortly. "I'm afraid that's my nature. Just as the Dark Side is yours."

Vader turned halfway; the cant of his caped shoulders looked contemptuous. At the thought, no doubt, that any mundane personality problem could be compared to his sacred Dark Side. He said nothing.

Tarkin took a breath. "I want you here, Vader. Not in this beach house specifically, but _with_ me. Not obeying me like some kind of trained dog, but listening when I ask for what I want. But it's true I might always ask too much of you. I'll be more critical than necessary; I'll push you when perhaps I ought not. I believe that's one of the risks I tried to list for you last visit. I'm not sure I can change it, any more than you can change yourself. I can accept that we'll sometimes clash and have difficulties. But if you don't want demands at all, then..." He spread his hands helplessly.

Vader took a step towards him. "You are afraid."

That was not the response Tarkin had expected, and he wasn't sure where it was going. But there was truth in it. He didn't want to admit to a problem he couldn't solve, not when he'd already put in all this work. He swallowed hard. "Somewhat, yes."

"You are afraid that _you_ are unworthy."

"That's... one way of putting it."

Tarkin did not think _unworthy_ was the right word. If the whole relationship failed now, it would be at least half Vader's fault, for admitting that his temper put his partners at risk and yet failing to accept correction. But he'd wanted to believe that he _could_ correct Vader, that he alone in all the Empire was smart and unyielding enough to get through. He still wanted that.

Back on Mustafar, one evening, Vader had insisted that the Dark Side did not care about worth. It took what it took. Everything burned the same.

Vader's form, now, still looked tense, but the aggression was gone. He walked to the seat beside Tarkin's and settled there. "Tell me, then. Show me your fear."

"What?"

Vader's tone was patient, implacable. "I told you three reasons, this morning, why you should not care for me. I have done terrible things; I require lengthy medical procedures daily; I am physically hideous. You insist that this is not one-sided. If you mean that, tell me three of yours. Tell me why I should not care for you."

"Oh," said Tarkin faintly. He did, belatedly, understand. He had asked, last night, for Vader to be intimate with him. To tell him personal things. To open himself. But Tarkin had not opened himself in return. Later that night, Vader had come to him with a very specific personal question, one that was clearly meaningful to him and that it wouldn't have been very difficult to answer as a show of good faith, but in his fit of spite over Vader's other odd nighttime activities, Tarkin had refused.

He let out a long breath.

"Well," he said, "as I believe we were just discussing, I'm a rather difficult person. I am stern, demanding, and critical. I have firm ideas about how things should be done, and I want it all on my own terms. That's one."

"Good," said Vader. He reached for Tarkin's hand, and Tarkin hesitantly reciprocated; Vader's thickly gloved fingers wrapped lightly around his own. "Continue."

Tarkin didn't think he could quite say all this straight into Vader's expectant mask. He looked out the window instead, at the sheets of gray rain that continued to fall and the splashing of the angry waves. "If you want another, there's the fact that I have a very busy schedule. That's a sticking point for a lot of people; you've seen a little of it already. I govern the entire Outer Rim, I have several very specific military projects under my purview, and I have duties related to the Senate. Between the three of them, those things keep me running around the galaxy almost constantly. I've been told I ought not to pretend I have time for a relationship at all."

This was the issue that had ended most of Tarkin's relationships. It wasn't the war crimes, or the pressures of the public eye, or the way he turned cold under pressure; there were people who liked all those things. It was the simple, boring, mundane fact that Tarkin wasn't ever really around.

It had certainly been the largest of the many problems with his marriage. Thalassa had at first accepted the instabilities of being a military wife - she'd preened over it, in fact, delighted at earning a husband so important and accomplished - but over time the distance had worn on her. She'd breathed a sigh of relief when he was appointed Moff of the Seswenna sector, believing that a government job might see him at least vaguely home with her and the children for more than a month or two out of the year. In fact, it turned out worse than before. The title of Grand Moff, with its even higher honors and wider responsibilities, had been the last straw.

To the extent that Tarkin ever had successes, it had been mostly with people like Vader. People who had their own lifelong callings to the military or the government, and their own difficult schedules, and who therefore, implicitly, understood.

Vader looked at him curiously. "This visit was delayed by my duties, not yours."

Tarkin lightly squeezed his gloved hand. "It was, wasn't it? But I was the late one last time, and I seem to recall you disliked that. In general, the amount of contact we've had so far is about average for me."

And that was an average that only counted the sane, normal relationships. The ones that had a fighting chance, because he and his objects of interest were actually stationed together sometimes. There were other types. He wasn't even going to _begin_ to discuss Natasi, who had spent the last several years in a top-secret research installation under such a heavy comms blackout that even Tarkin mostly couldn't call.

The Empire's needs came first. The fate of the thousands of worlds under Tarkin's care was vastly more important than even the most pleasant private matters. He'd always believed that. But even he occasionally regretted the collateral.

Vader was looking at him intently. "That is two reasons. I await the third."

"Let me think," said Tarkin. He wasn't in the habit of carrying around mental lists of his own weaknesses. Vader's focus on him felt distractingly intense, no matter how apparently tender his hold on Tarkin's hand.

Come to think of it, hand-holding was another thing they hadn't done before. What a strange creature Vader was, doing everything almost exactly in reverse.

Suddenly Tarkin remembered a third thing. He'd had a similar thought about Vader doing things backwards before, one of their mornings on Mustafar. Tarkin had been on his knees, and Vader had pressed Force-sensation into his mouth, imitating a kiss. It had been strangely thrilling, that incongruous bit of tenderness. That same scene had gone strange, a few minutes later: Tarkin had accidentally switched dominant, though he'd been too well-immobilized to do much about it. But Vader had noticed the incongruity in his feelings, and they'd both ended up a bit disoriented.

He would need to think of a fourth reason. He did _not_ want to mention this one, not when Vader was already so preoccupied by the issue of who was in control.

"You thought of one," Vader said. "Say it."

Which meant there was nothing else for it, no matter how reluctant Tarkin might be to bring it up. Vader needed honesty from him now, above everything.

"You're aware that I've played dominant more often than submissive," he said carefully. "You're not the first person I've switched for, but it used to be only a very occasional thing. I've been pleasantly surprised how well it's worked with you. I don't intend ever to ask something of you that you're uncomfortable with, but I'm fairly sure you don't want to submit to me. And I'm concerned that, at some point, this may cause friction between us. Or it may lead me to be distracted elsewhere, I suppose."

Vader seemed to consider that for a moment, and then he let go of Tarkin's hand. Drew himself up. Tarkin held his breath, but when Vader spoke, his voice was amused. Decisive.

"Good," he said. "That is what we will do, then. Tonight."

Tarkin made a small strangled noise. "What-?"

He'd tried to emphasize that he _wasn't_ asking Vader for this. Had he miscalculated completely?

But, despite all his complaints about Tarkin wanting control, Vader wasn't speaking like someone who'd been pressured into submission. He was speaking as though this was the solution to some problem. As though it pleased him.

Vader's voice was indulgently amused. "Have you forgotten that I am interested in your worst instincts? You have shown me your hypocrisy. You have given me your fear. Now give me your cruelty."

"You just said that I wanted too _much_ control," Tarkin complained. Yet Vader was so capricious; this almost shouldn't have surprised him. He was already remembering how badly he'd wanted this on Mustafar. The mental image of Vader kneeling at his feet, begging him for more - that fantasy still came to him readily, with a shock of half-scandalized need.

"And, as you say, that is your nature." Vader leaned forward. "So I will not try to take it from you. But I will have you admit to it, instead of pretending your terms are the only rational ones. I will have you follow all those rules you yourself are so fond of. And what I will get out of it is that I will watch you face your fears. You will give in to the very urges that you fear will drive me away. I would not offer this to most of my submissives, and I will not offer it often, even to you. But I want it now. Show me that you are a monster, too."

Tarkin swallowed hard. He had tried to imagine this, more than once since Mustafar. It would be extremely challenging playing dominant to Vader. He was encased in armor he couldn't take off, he probably wasn't experienced enough at submitting to know what he liked, and Tarkin wasn't aware of any bondage tool that could take away his power with the Force. Tarkin wasn't entirely sure how it would go. He had ideas about what to try, but it was anyone's guess how they would fare in practice.

Tarkin had always liked a challenge, though.

He felt himself straightening his posture, sharpening his gaze. Assuming a demeanor through which the act of command felt natural. He was pleased not to hear any waver in his voice, only cold amusement, as he said, "You can't have it _now,_ of course. You'll have to wait your turn. We'll have a pleasant afternoon and a good dinner, and then I'll have you in the evening, at my leisure."

A delay was necessary for very practical reasons; they'd had sex already a couple of hours ago, and Tarkin's refractory period wasn't what it had once been. More importantly, a delay would give him time to negotiate properly, to figure out what kind of submission Vader would and wouldn't enjoy, without having to string all the questions together in one barrage. Time to figure out what in the galaxy he was _doing._

"Then I will watch your mind until then," said Vader.

However well he played the part of confidence, Tarkin's real feelings would be visible to Vader as they always were. His desire, but also his nervousness. It was a good thing, he thought faintly, that Vader liked both.


	7. Crenellated Ribbon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tarkin tries to kink-negotiate and play a strategy game at the same time. He's a bit distracted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This and the subsequent Actual Smut Scene were supposed to be all one chapter but the Actual Smut is taking sooooo many words, I decided I needed to split them up.

**_Crenellated Ribbon._ ** _This nudibranch can be recognized by the forest of small thick plumes adorning its long body, like the battlements of some elaborate castle. These plumes are used for defense, carrying small stinging cells in their tips. Unusually intelligent for a creature of its kind, the crenellated ribbon is constantly in motion, seeking the best vantage points for feeding and hiding and for communicating with others of its kind._

*

Vader watched Tarkin in amusement as the rain drummed down. He looked like he was calm and in control; Tarkin was good at looking that way. But Vader could feel his mind struggling to process its plans. He'd known Tarkin wanted a turn playing dominant, but Vader hadn't fully understood how _badly_ he'd wanted it. Not if the current storm of exhilaration, insecurity and lust was any indication.

Tarkin had explained why he feared this. He feared Vader didn't want it; he feared his need for it would drive Vader away. And Vader suspected other reasons. Vader's form of dominance revolved so heavily around sensation. If one wanted to give sensation  _back_ , it would be... challenging. He wasn't sure how he would do it himself, if he happened upon a submissive who wore armor like his. He was looking forward to seeing what Tarkin came up with.

Vader wasn't feeling the things submissives usually felt. Not the half-frightened heat, the desire to lose oneself. But it pleased him, being a challenge.

Tarkin had made his way to the gaming table, for all appearances like this was still a normal afternoon. He flicked at the controls and a holoboard sprang up, a complex landscape of hills and mountains, fields and coasts, divided into tiny squares of territory.

"Do you like strategy games?" Tarkin inquired. "This one's my favorite."

"I have never played," said Vader.

Vader didn't have much of a head for strategy. He liked to wade into a battle and feel his next moves by instinct. But Tarkin was considered one of the Empire's better strategists. Watching that skill set at work would not be a bad method for whiling away the afternoon.

"We'll put you through the tutorial, then. Here." Tarkin pressed a key, and the holo reformed itself into a smaller map, with a few simple features and instructions. Vader glided over to the seat opposite him and inspected it.

The game was called Castle Falls, and it was designed to simulate war on a primitive, pre-spaceflight world, with all the corresponding limitations. No electronics or explosives, nothing more advanced than a simple siege engine. No using the Force, either. Players bought units each turn which held territory, and they could move around, attack other territories, defend or build improvements. The more territory one held, the more budget one had for the next turn's units. The object of the game was to conquer the entire map.

"Let me ask you something," said Tarkin, as Vader paged through the tutorial and glanced at the different units. Knights and archers, scouts and masons, tamed creatures of various types. Tarkin's tone was casual, but Vader could feel him turning over plans in his mind; this would be the first of many careful questions. "Have you ever played submissive before?"

"Not for pleasure, no," said Vader, distracted by the list of creatures. He could feel a small thoughtful frown in his direction, but he didn't feel like clarifying.

Vader had a master already, of course. The Sith religion wasn't about kink - Palpatine was always both amused and insulted by the comparison - but there were parallels. Vader followed Palpatine's orders in every aspect of life, knelt and genuflected to him, took punishment when told to. There was nothing sexual about it for either of them. There were other sadists for whom it wasn't about sex, of course, people who liked to be cruel the way they liked backrubs or exercise. But the delight that Palpatine took in causing suffering was an outright religious rapture, and Vader had never seen anything else like it.

Whatever it felt like when Tarkin played dominant, his feelings would not resemble Palpatine's. Vader was sure of that. He was also sure, for the same reason, that he could take any kind of pain or humiliation Tarkin cared to offer.

He finished the tutorial and the game flicked back to the large-scale map it had displayed at the beginning. They chose their colors: red for Vader, silver for Tarkin. They each had a modest budget for their first units. Vader picked the ones that visually appealed to him most, a pack of red-eyed, slavering barghests. Tarkin went with a more spread-out force, a mix of cheap foot soldiers, archers, and a few stronger mounted knights. They picked their starting positions, and the chosen squares ticked over to red or silver as the appropriate hologram figures appeared.

"Tell me," Tarkin said conversationally, as they made their opening moves. "Is there anything I should know about your disability, in terms of how it affects what's safe for you? Are there positions you shouldn't hold, for example?"

Vader glanced at him, amused, and moved a few barghests up a hill, turning two more of the tiny squares red. Tarkin had more territory than him at the moment, which meant more new units and faster expansion, but Vader suspected that wasn't all there was to the game. "You have seen me train. Any movement my suit physically allows me is safe."

Tarkin bought a couple of mason units and started construction on something. "What about pain, though? Are certain things more painful for you than they would be for other people?"

Yes, Vader thought sardonically. Just a few small things like moving, breathing, speaking, being alive. "You will have to be more specific."

"Let's stick with positions and movements, then. If I wanted you, say, to kneel for an extended time, would that hurt you?"

Vader added a few mynocks to his army, weak but quick-moving, and started them flying around to capture new squares. "It would," he admitted. Having to admit to it aloud was bothersome. He supposed he'd pictured Tarkin diving in without much preamble. Enduring pain was in some ways easier than talking about it. "But it would not be out of bounds."

Tarkin's mind closed slightly, the way it always did when some protocol rule of his came up. "I don't think we'll play with that, especially not for a first time. I'd rather hurt you in ways I understand."

Even with the mynocks, Tarkin's territory was still expanding faster than Vader could keep up. Vader moved his border a little closer to Tarkin's, started amassing barghest troops to prepare an attack. Tarkin had resented being treated like a fainting damsel, and Vader now felt some of that resentment on his own behalf. "You need not worry about harming me. Few things will, and I would stop you if you tried them."

"If it's all the same to you, Vader, I'd like to avoid tripping over your boundaries _before_ that occurs. As opposed to waiting to see if you'll throw me across the room. Could you at least try to cooperate?"

"I am answering your questions."

Tarkin sighed to himself, and moved a few of his knights to the border to counter Vader's. "What positions are comfortable for you to hold?"

Vader had already said, this morning, that nothing was ever comfortable except the bacta tank. But he could translate what Tarkin had really meant to ask: what positions kept his pain at the background levels he was used to ignoring, as opposed to the ones that annoyed him. "Standing. Sitting. Lying supine."

He watched Tarkin chew that over as the amassing of troops spilled over into actual battle. Barghests tore into humans and their mounts; mynocks harassed them with screeching calls and sharp teeth. Barrages of arrows met them in midair, and swords and lances flashed. The animations were suitably bloody, and after several rounds the battle ended in a stalemate: a bit more territory for Vader in some directions, a few concessions to Tarkin in others, both sides battered into a cautious retreat.

Vader could tell Tarkin was playing badly, only because Tarkin himself seemed to think so. Tarkin still had more units and more territory, and Vader hadn't noticed any specific mistakes, but Vader felt his distraction, and his frustration with himself when the resulting battles didn't go as decisively in his favor as he was used to. He'd watch Tarkin's mind more closely, he decided. That might be entertaining.

Tarkin kept his border fortified as he moved out over some unoccupied territory near a mountain range. Vader's territory was beginning to expand along the range's other side; eventually, at its end, they would meet and clash again.

"Here's another question," said Tarkin. "Obviously this was your idea." Not quite true; switching had been Tarkin's idea, back on Mustafar. Vader owned not the idea but the decision. "Was there any mental image you had, anything that made you feel excited or curious when you offered? Anything you'd especially like me to do?"

It was a good question, and it was also taking his attention further away from the game. Vader made a few other obvious moves and watched the way Tarkin did or didn't attend to them; perhaps he could turn this lack of focus against him. Tarkin would appreciate a gambit like that.

"What I want you to do," he said, "is indulge yourself. Remember that I share your senses and your feelings; that will not change. I am imagining the shape your mind will make when you have me in your power, after wanting and fearing that for so long. That is what I want to feel. The physical manifestation is not important."

Vader liked partners who feared him and wanted him anyway. If Tarkin did this correctly, then that was what it would be, no matter who was playing dominant to whom.

Tarkin barely glanced at the board as he made his moves. "What about the reverse? Is there anything you're hoping I won't do? Any limits?"

Vader made his own casual moves in a direction Tarkin wasn't paying much attention to. "No."

That seemed to startle Tarkin into annoyance. He narrowed his eyes across the game board. "Vader."

"I told you, the physical manifestation is not important. I am not fragile."

Tarkin leaned in irately. " _Vader._ You are entirely too experienced for this nonsense. Fragility has nothing to do with it. Haven't you ever dealt with a novice submissive who insisted they didn't have limits?"

Vader paused. "At times." Mostly earlier in his kink career, before he'd decided that playing with novices was a bad idea. This was different, though. Vader wasn't a novice. He might not have played submissive himself before, but he'd shared submissives' senses hundreds of times, and he _was_ a Sith apprentice.

"And? How did that go?"

"They regretted it," Vader admitted. Though one or two, after some time to lick their wounds and create a more robust list of what they didn't want to do, had come crawling back; those had used to be his favorites.

"So." Tarkin gestured impatiently. "Take this to its logical conclusion, Vader. You have limits."

Vader settled back in his chair and moved a few more of his barghests in a direction Tarkin wasn't attending to. "None that are not common sense. Do not injure me. Do not remove or try to tamper with my suit. I will inform you if I think of another."

Tarkin regarded him a moment, and the corner of his mouth quirked up. "No sand?"

Vader did not dignify that with a response.

A small electronic noise startled Tarkin's attention back to the game. The building he'd been constructing was finally complete. It looked like a barracks topped with an elaborate spire, and it greatly increased Tarkin's unit production per turn. Waves of knights and foot soldiers began to pour out of it. Vader's forces would be quickly overwhelmed if he didn't take care of that.

He spent his budget that turn on a couple of large units, bulky horned beasts around which the barghests swarmed like syncophants, and he pressed forward. Tarkin countered with a cavalry defense. By incurring significant casualties, Vader made it two whole squares in towards the barracks that turn. That wouldn't be enough, not with Tarkin's superior ability to replenish his numbers each turn.

Tarkin clicked his tongue, distracted, as he generated the next wave of knights and sent them all in the direction of Vader's monsters. "You should have gone for the construction in its earlier stages; you're not going to do much good with a frontal assault  _now._ "

"Perhaps you are right," said Vader.

Tarkin had defended well against the frontal assault, but had not been paying attention, and thus he had not noticed the inroads Vader had been making, over the last several dozen turns, in every other direction. Nor had he seen the portion of his budget Vader had been saving for the time when he needed a grand gesture. Now the bulk of Tarkin's forces were gathered against his pair of hooved beasts, at the front, with relatively few guarding the other sides.

Vader dropped his budget on four more of those, and a matching swarm of new barghests, and swept in from the back.

"Oh," said Tarkin, startled, as squares rapidly blinked over from silver to red, one after another. "That's - that's a _child's_ trick, Vader. That's the most obvious - How did I not notice you setting that up?"

"You have been distracted," Vader smugly informed him. "I can see your mind. I merely made note of the areas to which you had not paid attention."

"That's..." Tarkin leaned forward over the board, a hand to his face, as the animated battle raged. "That's good, actually. Well done. You would not have gotten away with it any other time but now."

"Battles are only ever fought in the now."

Vader's forces eventually came to a halt. They'd made it almost all the way to the barracks, and taken a great deal of the surrounding territory as well. Tarkin could drag his defense out another few turns, but even with new troops pouring from the barracks, it wouldn't last long now.

"You're aware, if you take the square normally, you can opt to capture the barracks for yourself," Tarkin offered.

"I was not aware," said Vader, wondering at Tarkin's purpose in telling him. It wasn't like him to want to help his opponent.

"Ah, but now you are," said Tarkin, unperturbed. "So you'll understand why I'm doing this."

Tarkin summoned a single new unit into the barracks, a snakelike, burrowing creature. It promptly dived under the barracks' foundations. The building cracked, then crashed to the ground altogether and vanished.

Vader tilted his head at the suddenly-not-very-strategically-desirable clump of silver squares surrounded by his forces. "It allows you to do that?"

"Yes. The building has hit points."

"Against your own troops?"

"Just so. Of course, I wouldn't have had to resort to scorched-earth tactics if I'd been paying more attention to yours." Tarkin narrowed his eyes at the board. "Perhaps we'll fix that."

The game settled, as the rain poured down, into a lengthy war of attrition. Tarkin had learned the lesson about getting distracted, and he focused on the game now. He'd lost his initial advantage, but he and Vader were still evenly matched in terms of territory. He started constructing another building, but Vader had learned his lesson about those, too, and immediately pressed in to stop him. Tarkin countered, the next turn, by spending his entire budget on masons and starting up three different unidentified construction projects in three different far-flung locations.

"One more question," he said eventually - pausing the game completely this time. It was the end of his turn, but he hadn't pressed the key that would give control back over to Vader. "Are there any - ah - religious strictures that affect this for you? Anything you're not supposed to do, for that reason. Or that you're only supposed to do with certain people. Or that you're obliged to do, I suppose."

It amused Vader, the way he danced around the question. The way he wouldn't say the Sith religion's name, nor the Emperor's. Vader suspected Tarkin didn't want to think about that part of it too hard.

"Very few," he answered. "The Sith religion is... permissive. The strictures that exist are not ones you could violate by accident, especially since you cannot use the Force. Unless you plan to tell me what to do in my meditation, or on my missions, or to have me call you Master, I do not foresee a problem."

Tarkin acknowledged this with a wave of his hand, and refocused again, with some difficulty, on the game.

Vader went after the three construction projects but his efforts were scattershot, and the balance of the game drifted back into Tarkin's favor. He was no longer distracted; he watched each tiny movement of Vader's troops with a hawklike glare. Over the next hour, the whole game board ticked over bit by bit, inexorably, to silver.

Finally, as the rain calmed down to a drizzle, Vader's last handful of barghests made their last stand. Tarkin had offered him the chance to surrender, but Vader preferred not to. He preferred to watch the last few of his monsters give their all, to watch them bravely cut down by Tarkin's lances and swords without yielding.

So that was what happened, and as the last barghest's lifeless body fell, the game made a chiming noise. A title appeared, in floating aurebesh letters, declaring that the silver player now ruled the world.

Tarkin regarded those letters with a wordless smile of satisfaction, then killed the display and refocused, speculatively, on Vader. It was about dinnertime.

"Here's what we'll do," he said. "I'm going to go upstairs, make a few preparations, and have a quick meal. You should eat, too. Take your time with your nutrient packs and anything else that you typically require at this time, and then go to the third bedroom on your side of the hall. Not the one I've been sleeping in, but the one next to it. The bed will be made for you when you arrive. Sit there, in a position that's comfortable for you, and await my arrival." His smile twitched just a little bit wider, sardonically. "I _am_ going to teach you to wait."

*

**_Sunset fish._ ** _This brilliantly colored species is rarely seen, for an unusual reason: it spends most of its time asleep. Each sunset fish makes its home in a particular small crevice in one of Scarif's reefs, hiding there motionless for most of the day and night. It is only at twilight that schools of sunset fish briefly emerge to feed, resulting in a spectacular display of colors._


	8. Green Knifefish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tarkin gets a turn playing dominant, for once.

**_Green Knifefish._ ** _This curious fish undergoes a dramatic seasonal transformation each year, at the time of Scarif's autumn equinox. For most of the year, the knifefish is a placid plankton-feeder, using its dark green coloration to blend in with the seaweed forests near Scarif's poles. But in the fall breeding season, for a few weeks, the knifefish earns the other half of its name, becoming an ambush predator with a voracious appetite for other fish. The additional energy from this new source of food fuels the growth of the knifefish's eggs, which are released into the ocean in spectacular numbers._

*

As Vader disappeared into the master bedroom, Tarkin pulled a set of dark red bedsheets from the linen closet and carried them into the guest room he'd indicated. It was a cozy room with a good view, but the drawers were empty and the sturdy double bed bare. Tarkin had instructed Vader to wait here, rather than in the room where Tarkin had been sleeping, mainly so that Tarkin could make a better entrance. He was feeling more self-conscious than he wanted to admit, and he didn't want Vader to watch him rummaging around, trying to remember which kink supplies he kept at this beach house and where.

He would have preferred to have a droid handle this, if he hadn't already sent his droids and servants away. But Tarkin remembered basic training. It had been a great many years, but he still knew how to make a bed military-style, hospital corners and all, in under a minute. He also pulled the bedside table out to near the foot of the bed, where he'd have it within easy reach.

He then went to his actual room and did the rummaging. Tarkin was glad that he had a general habit of being organized; the supplies were tucked away in a lower part of his closet where he thought he'd left them, and there were even a few that he'd forgotten about. He took out a small bag, picked out just two items, and carefully zipped them inside.

Vader seemed very confident, and he wasn't _exactly_ inexperienced, but he'd still never done this before. Tarkin had already proven, last night, how easy it was for a new activity not to go as expected. He was going to keep things simple tonight. No intricate mind games, no extended humiliation or agony. Just a straightforward taste, for Vader, of how it felt to give up control.

Tarkin looked down at the stairs, his supplies fully assembled, and contemplated skipping dinner. Or postponing it, at least. He was a bit too nervous to relish the thought of eating. But he'd said to Vader that he would have a quick meal before starting - said it more than once, in that confident dominant's tone - so he was bloody well going to have one. He went down to the kitchen and absently fixed himself the same type of sandwich he'd had for lunch.

He heard Vader's heavy footsteps overhead, moving from the master bedroom to the guest room. He took another look at the food and drinks available, then got out a glass and poured himself some of that good wine he'd brought along. Tarkin knew his own tolerances, and one small glass wouldn't affect his judgment, only steady him a bit.

He sipped it carefully, looking out at the rain, which had subsided by now into a light-gray drizzle. He should let himself savor this. When he'd drained the glass, he ate the sandwich, then put the dishes away and went back to his room to change clothes.

When he stepped into Vader's guest room at last, he did it confidently, bag in hand, dressed not in casual wear but in his full Grand Moff's uniform. Tarkin didn't often wear his work clothes during kink; he'd had a surfeit of potential partners, at one point, who wanted the uniform more than they wanted _him,_ and it had annoyed him. But there was no danger of that with Vader. And after so many years, it was second nature to stand a little straighter when in uniform, to be a little sharper and less yielding, to put on his command like a second skin. He needed that here, even if Vader saw through it. Especially if Vader saw through it.

Vader was sitting, as instructed, on the edge of the bed. His hands were palm up in his lap, and he was very still.

Even this simple visual made Tarkin feel a small flutter. It ought not to have; he'd seen Vader sitting still on many occasions. But it was the first command he'd given Vader tonight, to sit here and wait, and Vader had complied perfectly. Darth Vader himself was waiting, in a submissive pose, on Tarkin's bed.

Vader wasn't a natural submissive. Probably. If he was, then they were both about to be very surprised. But Vader had done this, willingly, anyway. For _him._

 _Savor it,_ he reminded himself. They weren't going to do this often.

"There," he said coolly. "You've followed one instruction, at least. How are you feeling?"

Verbal check-ins were going to be important here. Tarkin was normally good at reading Vader's body language, mask or no mask, but Vader wasn't going to spend much of tonight moving, nor choosing his own posture. When it came to judging his mental state, Tarkin wasn't going to have much to go on. He'd need to ask.

"Impatient," said Vader after a slight pause.

Tarkin let himself smile slightly. "How unfortunate for you. Because we're going to be doing all of this on _my_ schedule."

He put down his bag on the bedside table and drew out the pair of items he'd chosen. A long durasteel chain, coiled neatly around itself, and a small, black baton. He placed them neatly next to each other on the table, along with a pack of antiseptic tissues and a small vial of lubricant.

Vader's head turned slightly, watching him, but he said nothing. Tarkin calmly stood over him. How strange it was, being the one who loomed over Vader for a change.

"You're going to start," he said, "by focusing on my senses as you usually do. You're going to feel what I feel throughout this. No matter what I do, you're not going to withdraw your senses from mine until ordered to, or until the scene is over. Understood?"

"As you wish," said Vader.

He immediately complied. Tarkin could feel Vader's usual Force-touch, pressing gently at his skin an inch at a time, from Tarkin's head downward. He stood still, letting it go on as long as it needed to. The tables might have been turned for tonight, but this was still the only way he knew how to give Vader pleasure. And, although he planned to try a few things, he suspected it would be the only safe way to give Vader pain.

Vader went slowly. Tarkin was happy to wait, to breathe and savor. It was only when Vader roved below his waist, to explore his cock, that he realized he was already half-hard. They hadn't even done anything yet. He was more than a little nervous. He felt like an adolescent.

He stood still, letting his face remain impassive. He waited until Vader had focused all the way to the soles of his feet, to the tips of his toes.

Then he turned and walked the few steps to the bedside table, picking up the length of chain.

"Good," he said. "Next, we're going to bind you. Can you comfortably hold your arms like that for, say, the next thirty minutes?"

"Yes," said Vader. Tarkin had expected a yes; his arms looked relaxed, hanging down at his sides, with the hands resting naturally. But it was best to be sure.

"Then I'll just put this around you," Tarkin said, "to keep it that way. Inform me if anything pinches; I don't want this part to hurt."

He went carefully, fastening the chains first around Vader's waist and his elbows, then wrapping them upwards in successive loops. Tarkin normally preferred ropes for beginners. But there would have been something silly about trying to tie Vader up with mere ropes. The chains suited him aesthetically. Heavy, forbidding, austere.

The chains were easy to assemble; they attached to each other with simple clips. The trick was hanging them correctly across the body so that they pulled taut with movement, in complement to each other, rather than sagging down into a metallic pile. Tarkin didn't bother trying to fasten Vader to the bed, or to immobilize him fully; he intended to make this as simple as possible. Just fix Vader's arms where they were and get him used to the feeling of chains on him. He arranged things accordingly and then, with a glint of mischief, wrapped the last bits in a loose collar-like arrangement around Vader's neck.

He tugged, testing the chains cris-crossing Vader's chest; they held, and they pleased him. Not too much give and not too little.

He stepped back, then, to admire his handiwork.

The sight of Vader waiting on his bed for him had given him flutters, but the sight of Vader chained took his breath away. It made heat rise, startlingly strong, between his legs. He'd chosen the chains well; they stood out against Vader's black armor, complemented the heavy, shining look of him. Vader had complained of being treated like a beast but he willingly sat like this, bound like one, silent and patient. Tarkin could scarcely believe that this wasn't some enormous mistake. He felt very, very powerful.

"My dear," he breathed, "I am astounded by the way that looks on you. I could look at you in chains all day. How are you feeling?"

"Indifferent," said Vader. "But you, on the other hand. Your mind pleases me."

He tilted his head up slightly, meeting Tarkin's eyes, and for a moment Tarkin felt strangely transparent. He remembered what Vader had said: he wanted this because of how it would make Tarkin feel. Vader was feeling all of Tarkin's exultant admiration, right now. And he liked it. That mere thought sent another rush of heat straight to Tarkin's cock. Vader _wanted_  Tarkin looking at him like this.

"Next thing," Tarkin said briskly. "I know your fondness for using the Force, so I'd like to see if you can use it on my command. I'm going to stick with sensations that I know are in your repertoire, but for this evening you're only going to produce the ones I ask for. You'll start when I order it, and stop when I say. Do you understand?"

"Understood," said Vader.

Tarkin held out his right hand, palm up. "Heat," he instructed, "in the palm of my hand. Start."

Warmth bloomed in his hand immediately, just at the verge of pain. He closed his fist and opened it again, turning his hand over, savoring it.

"Stop."

The sensation vanished.

"Again." It came back, just the same. "Stop. Good. Cold, now, at the back of my hand. Start."

This appeared as promptly as the previous sensation: an instant chill strong enough to hover at Tarkin's pain threshold. He flexed his hand again, studying the way that the Force-sensation followed the nerve endings, even when he moved. "Good. Stop. Now you're going to stroke my hand, soft, the way I liked this morning. Start."

He'd thought of a few ways that this scene might go. Before he decided how he'd finish, he wanted to test a few basic building blocks. Chains; commands; sexual pleasure; pain. Vader's responses would help him choose where to go from there. Tarkin definitely wanted sex at some point, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to order Vader to do it, like this, or to do it himself. Was Vader the type who enjoyed being put to work, or would he want to sit helpless in his chains and be ravished?

Vader caressed Tarkin's hand now with exquisite soft slowness, from the heel of the hand up the palm, and down the length of each finger. Tarkin shut his eyes briefly in bliss. Vader tugged at each fingertip a final time, then let go.

Tarkin's eyes snapped open. Vader, chained on the edge of the bed, had not moved. "Did I say the word 'stop'?"

"You did not," Vader admitted.

"Then is there some problem?"

"No." Vader's tone was calm, implacable. "I interpreted your request as a singular action."

"Ah. Then let me clarify." Tarkin took a step closer to Vader; he'd already loomed a little, and now he was directly in Vader's face. He hooked his fingers through that lovely loose chain-collar and pulled, tilting Vader's chin up, an inch from his own. " _I_ will tell you when to stop. When I give you the word 'start,' you are to begin the action then and continue until I tell you you're done. You are not to creatively interpret your instructions, only to begin and end as you are told. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

Tarkin let go of him. "Let's try again, then, shall we?" He took a step back into his original position, and held out his hand. "That soft sensation I liked this morning, in my hand. Start."

Vader started, and Tarkin let it drag out for an obnoxiously long time, listening to Vader's breath and to the soft patter of the rain on the roof. He felt the soft brush of the Force against his palm and fingers, repeating in a loop. He liked the sensation very much, and he liked even more the feeling of making Vader do it. Making Vader stay endlessly with that one sensation, when Vader hated to wait. He let himself savor it for several minutes, before at last his own arousal won out.

"Stop," he said, and Vader silently, instantly stopped. "How are you feeling?"

"The same as before," said Vader, unruffled. "I am enjoying the feel of your mind."

Tarkin smiled slightly. Vader was no longer working at his hand, but he'd done it for so long that Tarkin almost still felt the echo of it. "But it isn't only my mind that feels good at the moment, is it? Say what you mean."

"As you wish." Vader's helmet tilted, ever so slightly, and his voice took on a low, amused tone. "I am enjoying your lust. All I have had to do is sit where you want and perform a few simple tasks. And you are already so hard for me that it hurts you."

Tarkin swallowed involuntarily, because that was correct. His cock ached, trapped in his uniform trousers. "Would you like to feel a little more of that?"

Vader didn't answer, but the question had been rhetorical. Tarkin undid the fly of his trousers and drew himself out. He was _very_ hard, the skin flushed and straining in his hand, a bead of moisture gathering at the tip. He reached for the side table and tipped a tiny drop of lubricant into his fingers. Then he took hold of his own length. Lazily, he drew his slicked thumb and fingertips up and down his own shaft. Not nearly the amount of stimulation he wanted, but enough to make the nerve endings cry out in response, to make it difficult to think of anything else.

"This is what did it for me that morning on Mustafar, you know," he said, keeping his hand's movements slower than what instinct demanded. He didn't want to bring himself off yet. But this, for a minute or two, was part of the plan. "All the things you do to me, and at first I'd thought that I couldn't touch you back. Not through all that armor of yours. But you feel what I feel, when we're together. So I realized that, if I want to give you pain or pleasure - if I want to fill you with sensations of my own choosing - all I have to do is touch _me._ "

Vader didn't answer, but Tarkin could tell he was focused, watching carefully. Making his partners watch him wasn't typically Tarkin's kink, but he savored the thought of how this would feel to Vader's impatient senses. Tarkin could comfortably stay at the edge, could draw his own pleasure and urgency out, far longer than Vader could. Vader would just have to endure that, for once.

He bent down, cupping Vader's masked face in one hand as the other worked. Vader didn't try to pull away, and that pleased him. "It's a shame I can't fill you some other way," he mused. "If you weren't in a mask, I might make you suck this. Would you like that, I wonder?"

He'd meant to say more. But his voice failed him as a whole slew of Force-sensation suddenly closed in around his cock. Hot and wet and moving irregularly around him. Tarkin nearly lost his balance.

"Like this, you mean?" said Vader.

"Stop," Tarkin said sharply.

Vader stopped. Tarkin stepped back and took a moment to catch his breath. That had felt... good. He'd very nearly come on the spot. But Vader had acted out of turn, and that would not do.

"I have told you before," said Vader. "It is unwise to assume anything is impossible for me."

"Hm," said Tarkin, drawing himself back upright and regaining his poise. "Quite so. I do believe you've answered for me the question of how we'll finish this, later." He tucked his erection back into his trousers. His voice sounded commanding again, to his ears. "But it is also unwise, my dear, to disobey orders. I already told you that you're only to produce Force sensations when I instruct. So we're going to put this away for now, and we're going to do something you'll like less."

Vader didn't respond. It seemed that, when he wasn't mischievously subverting orders, Vader was mostly the quiet, stoic type.

Tarkin turned to the bedside table, wiped the lubricant from his fingers, then reached for the baton. He flicked a recessed switch in its side, and a set of small lights winked on along its stubby length, indicating settings and readiness. Turning it over in his hand, he held it out for Vader to look at. "Do you recognize what this is?"

"A nerve baton," Vader answered. Such tools were a cousin to the more dangerous stun batons used for Imperial crowd control and interrogation; instead of electricity, they relied on a more localized impulse, precisely calibrated to cause pain to living beings, even through thick clothes or makeshift armor, without damaging anything.

"Correct," said Tarkin. "This model is outfitted with a range of settings whose lower end is quite mild, so it's suitable for personal use. Have you ever had one used on you before?"

"No. But it is safe for me, so long as it is kept to extremities."

Tarkin had suspected as much, but it was good to hear it from Vader directly; Vader knew his own medical needs better than Tarkin did. He hadn't planned to use the baton near Vader's life support systems anyway; he wasn't quite that reckless. Unfortunately, that did mean that the only parts of Vader he had to work with were prosthetics, and Tarkin wasn't entirely sure if the nerve technology would have an effect on those. He took the baton back and turned it, clicking through its settings and watching the lights change accordingly. "This isn't technically a punishment; we're merely getting to it sooner than we would have. Your hands are capable of feeling pain, yes?"

"If they are damaged, yes."

Tarkin knelt down so as to focus on Vader's gloved hands, chained palm up in his lap. "I'm unsure exactly how well this will work, so we're going to test it. I'm going to require perfect honesty, so that I can understand what I'm doing. Don't pretend not to feel something if you do. If you feel mild pain that you consider too trivial to complain about, or an unusual but neutral sensation, say that. Understood?"

"Understood."

"We'll start with the lowest setting." Tarkin turned the baton until it clicked into place at setting number one; there were ten in total. He paused. "How are you feeling?"

"Mildly interested," said Vader. He hesitated, seeming to remind himself of Tarkin's request for honesty. "Apprehensive."

"Oh, good," said Tarkin. Making Vader admit to nervousness was an achievement, no matter how the rest of this went. He nestled the business end of the baton into Vader's gloved palm. "Not to worry; if this works, it will take only a few seconds. Here's setting one."

He pressed a switch, and the baton made a humming sound, the internal lights turning from a soft yellow-white to red. Vader did not move. Tarkin counted to three in his head, then turned it back off. "How did that feel?"

"Like nothing," Vader responded. "No different from when the device was turned off."

Individual sensitivity varied, but to an average person, setting one on this model was a strong buzz or a nice mild unthreatening pain. If Vader couldn't feel it, that might mean it wasn't going to work at all, or it might just be that the signal on setting one was too weak and his glove too thick. Tarkin frowned slightly, then adjusted. "Setting three, then." He pressed the switch again.

Setting three had no effect, nor did four or five, as they quickly discovered.

"Governor Tarkin," Vader said dryly, "are you having difficulty performing?"

Tarkin worked his jaw, considering Vader's body. It would probably be different if he switched to an area where Vader actually _had_ nerves. The upper arms, perhaps, or the thighs. But he couldn't, of course. Those weren't _extremities,_ and they were too close to his life support systems _._ He wasn't going to risk actually injuring Vader. He wouldn't have anyway, but especially not after the talk they'd just had, when _do not injure me_ was one of the few limits Vader had felt capable of expressing.

In any case, he would not verbally rise to Vader's bait. "I imagined this might happen; we were only testing, after all. It's likely a simple incompatibility between the tech in the baton and the tech in your arm. But just in case, let's try you on setting ten."

He dialed the baton upwards, watching its lights transition from the simple yellow-white of standby to an orange-yellow of warning. He suppressed a sympathetic wince. Tarkin had a high pain threshold, but setting ten on this device was a bit too much even for him. He pressed it to the heel of Vader's hand, a little closer to the wrist, in case that made a difference. Then he flicked the switch and let it hum to life.

"That still does not feel like anything," Vader informed him.

Tarkin rose to his feet. Despite his outward calm, he was a bit frustrated; he'd wanted this to work, and Vader's insouciance didn't help. For a moment he let himself imagine hurting Vader in other ways. Shoving him around into some of those positions he'd said would hurt him, holding him there with those chains that suited him so well, until he cried for mercy. But that was beneath him. He'd expected that the baton might fail in this manner, and he already had a safer backup plan.

"Not to worry," he said. "It was worth a try. Here's what that was meant to have felt like."

He dialed the baton back down to setting eight, and then pushed it against his own forearm and pressed the switch.

A sharp, heavy pain immediately filled him from the wrist down, sending paralyzing sparks through his fingers and shooting twinges up toward the elbow. Setting eight was as much as Tarkin could take with any dignity. He still felt himself wince, and a small ambiguous sound escape his throat.

"I would have dearly loved to be able to hurt you directly," he continued. "But I don't need to. Because you feel what I feel. Your senses are chained to mine until I'm finished with you. So all I have to do, if I want you to feel pain, is put it here. How are you feeling?"

"Indifferent," said Vader again. Tarkin frowned; that was not the effect he'd been looking for. He turned the baton back on.

It went on like that for a few minutes, Tarkin trying the baton on different parts of himself, bearing the pain with some effort, trying to talk dominantly through it. This technique wasn't nearly as effective as he'd imagined. Tarkin was at his pain threshold already; he couldn't go higher without losing composure. He trusted that Vader was feeling it. But Vader was _so_ stoic, behind his mask, that he might as well not have been.

He should have taken this into account in his plans. When Vader played dominant, he filled Tarkin with pain and he felt that pain, yet he almost never gave any outward sign of doing so; most of the time he stood there, speaking as Tarkin required and making small motions with his hands, an otherwise inscrutable black bulk. Tarkin had seen Vader trembling under the weight of shared pain, but that had been... rare. Only in the most extreme scenes, ones that had gotten out of control, in their relationship's unruly early stages. With levels of agony that Tarkin didn't enjoy and didn't have the werewithal to inflict on himself, even a little.

Vader felt Tarkin's pain, but that didn't mean Vader would react to it the way Tarkin wanted. If anything, Vader's pain threshold was significantly higher than his.

"May I speak freely?" said Vader, sensing the way Tarkin paused in frustration.

Tarkin waved an irritable hand. "You've been speaking freely this whole time, but go on."

"You are holding back," said Vader. "I liked your mind before, when you were indulging yourself. I liked your pleasure. This is not giving you pleasure. You know other ways to hurt me; try them. I told you I am not fragile."

"Vader-" Tarkin started, in frustration, and then stopped. He could, of course. Forget trying to get through the suit, or trying to take advantage of their Force connection. He could simply use Vader's disability against him. But he did not _want_ to. He was fairly sure it would be bad form, and also dangerous.

"Or are you too afraid?" Vader continued. "With all the worlds you hold in your hand, are you still too weak to do what must be done?"

Tarkin dropped the baton back onto the bedside table with a clank.

"Fine," he said. It was a transparent bit of provocation; he could have resisted it if he'd wanted to. But if Vader wanted this kind of punishment so badly, he could have it. "Kneel."

Vader shifted from the bed and, with the heavy grace Tarkin recognized from his training sessions, dropped to both knees on the floor. His arms stayed chained to his sides, but it didn't appear to impede him. Tarkin's mouth went dry, seeing him there; the ache between his legs flared strongly back to life. He'd wanted Vader kneeling to him, he'd pictured this specific thing in his fantasies, ever since Mustafar. He'd brought it up in their negotiations today; the only reason he hadn't gone for it, before, was out of fear of hurting Vader in the wrong ways. But now he had it, just like that. It was such an arresting sight, bringing his heart to his throat, even better than when he'd sat newly chained.

"Not like that," Tarkin said, cold mischief in his voice, echoing Vader's instructions from last night. "On one knee. Kneel for me the way you kneel for your master."

Vader obediently lifted one knee, shifting his weight. He bowed his head in genuflection. Tarkin had thought he might balk at this, but it was the full posture, perfectly correct.

For a moment Tarkin lost the power of speech. It would be almost unnecessary to add sex to this, despite his cock's urgent insistence otherwise. It was enough, perfection, just to drink the view in.

"How are you feeling?" he managed.

"My feelings are tolerable," Vader responded. "Yours are a delight."

"You are beautiful down there. Beauty doesn't begin to describe it." He took a breath and sharpened his gaze, regaining control. "It hurts, doesn't it? Better than the baton."

Vader unbowed his head, looking up at Tarkin with some masked expression he couldn't decipher. "Somewhat."

"Tell me, does being down on one knee hurt more than kneeling on both?"

Vader paused. "Yes."

"Can you tell me why? Is it the pressure of your knee against the floor?"

"My knees are mechanical. They do their jobs well. That is not the issue." He hesitated, as if this was difficult to talk about; Tarkin waited implacably through the pause. If he was going to do this, then he would, at the very least, need to understand what he was doing. "My legs above the knee are flesh, and they are burned severely. Any unusual position causes them to complain. But I can endure."

Tarkin tried for a moment to picture that in his mind, to make sure he had it correct - and then all at once he _was_ imagining it, vividly. He had tried to stop himself, before, from imagining Vader's real body. It felt invasive somehow. But the image was there in his mind now, a pair of scarred thighs under their black coverings, parted and tensed with pain, from the sockets where the limbs became mechanical all the way up, to a pair of strong scarred hips and whatever lay between them.

He wasn't sure, actually, just what Vader had between his legs and how much of it had survived. Clearly, Vader didn't use that part of his body during sex; it most likely wasn't functional. But, abruptly, Tarkin wanted it anyway. He wanted Vader's full and secret body bared to him, offered up like a sacrifice to his gaze, to his hands.

With a cruel smile, he refocused on the sight that was actually before him. The beauty of Vader, suited and chained, stoically kneeling.

"So what you mean to tell me, Vader," he said, "is that you don't like having to spread your legs." He looked Vader over speculatively. "You say you can endure this. How long, without any unwelcome residual effects? Ten minutes? Fifteen?"

"If that is required."

Tarkin crouched down to place a hand possessively on Vader's raised right knee. He savored that contact a moment, running his thumb lightly along the joint's inner edge. "Then you're going to spread these for me a little further. Only as much as I say. This, an inch further to the right." He reached lower, tapping the top of Vader's left knee where it pressed into the floor. "And this, an inch further left."

"As you wish." Vader obeyed, shifting his legs by what looked like a small amount. But Tarkin could picture it now, the twinges that must run along his inner thighs as he moved, the strain of inflexible skin pulled taut. He'd never been able to truly imagine what Vader's empathic senses felt like to him, what it was like to feel pain that was someone else's, yet without forgetting it was theirs. But  _this_ he could easily imagine, even if his own body didn't hold the same weaknesses.

"Does that hurt more than before?" he asked.

"Somewhat."

Tarkin felt his nostrils flare, like an animal smelling blood. "But you can hold it for me, can't you? For a minute or two?"

Vader's breath echoed between them, deceptively even. That mask, which would never let his breath quicken, not even in agony or fear. "Yes."

"Good." Tarkin stood back up. He fumbled into his trousers and drew his cock out again, so hard with anticipation that he could barely endure his own guiding hand. "Because now I'm going to make you suck me again, like we did earlier. And I'm not letting you move from this position until you've finished me." He took a breath, shortly, steeling himself. Searing the visual of Vader, abject below him like this, into his mind. "Start."

The Force closed around him instantly, hot and wet like before, and he couldn't help but make a noise. A strangled moan of pleasure. Vader knew his nerve endings, as ever; it was all he could do to hold on. He wanted this ecstasy to last, and of course it wouldn't, not long.

If he closed his eyes, he knew, the illusion would be perfect. A warm eager mouth around him, a constricting throat. But he didn't want to do that. He wanted to keep his eyes on Vader, kneeling there motionless in his chains. He never wanted to forget what that looked like.

Words spilled out of him, disjointed and raw. "Just like that, yes. Don't stop. Force, that's - Vader. My _dear_. Vader. Don't stop. _Fuck-_ "

He came as hard as he ever had in his life, black spots dancing in front of his eyes. He felt his knees give out, but he caught himself somehow. He was barely aware of his body except for the incandescent arc of pleasure coursing through it. Vader _didn't_ stop, even now. Vader kept moving around him, slowing only gradually, as his body spent itself.

He caught his breath afterwards, as his arousal drained away and Vader's touch faded to nothing. He'd shut his eyes at some point; dazed, he fluttered them back open.

Vader still knelt there beneath him. Tarkin was holding himself up on... nothing, actually. He'd fallen when he came and Vader was the one who had caught him, balancing him upright with the Force. Vader looked up at him now, and-

Oh no.

He'd been standing over Vader, his hips not far from Vader's masked face, pretending to fuck Vader's inaccessible mouth. Without really considering the consequences, he'd remained in that position when he came. He had, in fact, come all over Vader's helmet. There wasn't really all that much of it, but it was very _visible,_ the thick pale fluid against the black glossy mask, already starting to drip down.

He stood there frozen for a moment, taking this in. In the past half hour Tarkin had brought Darth Vader the actual Dark Lord of the Sith to his room, chained him, fucked him, made him kneel, and come on his masked face. Either he was literally going to die in the next fifteen seconds for his impertinence, or he was the most powerful man in the universe.

"Ah," he stammered, struggling properly to his feet. He got his weight back onto his own legs, and Vader relinquished his hold. "You should get up. Sit on the bed again. I'll just. Here." He snatched the pack of antiseptic tissues from the bedside table. Vader gracefully rose to his own feet and sat back as instructed, and Tarkin hurriedly began to clean him off. 

Vader endured these attentions with the same stoic, silent patience that he'd had throughout the evening. Tarkin listened, distracted, to his breath. Paid attention to the contours of the mask, the shapes and ridges of it, as he cleaned. He'd never really touched the mask before. Pulled it closer by an edge, but not explored it, not in this much detail. His ability to think straight was returning bit by bit as he dealt with these practicalities.

He wasn't done, of course. A dominant's job wasn't done when the sex was. He'd drilled that lesson into Vader enough times.

"That was very good for me," he said. His voice was steadier now. "Thank you. How was it for you?"

Vader paused. "It was odd," he admitted. "I have decided I do not enjoy pain that I did not inflict myself. But it was tolerable. And your mind, when you gave in to your real desire, was fascinating."

There was that phrase again, _give in._ It still had some significance that Tarkin did not quite understand. 

He wiped up the last of the mess, then tossed the tissues into the nearest waste bin. "What about the part at the end, with the kneeling? That was all right?"

"I told you it was tolerable. I told you I am not fragile." Vader looked away, as if embarrassed, perhaps. It was harder than normal to read his body language; this was so far outside the situations they were used to. "The Emperor keeps me kneeling longer than that when he is displeased. You, at least, made it amusing."

Tarkin reached for the chains and unclipped their ends, starting to unwind them from where they sat around Vader's body. He was uncomfortable with this answer for reasons he couldn't quite describe. He'd been mostly trying not to think about Vader and the Emperor. Except he _had_ thought of it, when Vader goaded him, hadn't he? _Kneel for me the way you kneel for your master._ That was definitely a sentence that had come out of his mouth, just then.

Maybe Vader had been right, before. Maybe a part of Tarkin did want him that way, tamed and leashed and obedient. Tarkin's interest was personal, and the Emperor's was... different from that, but maybe not as different as he wanted to think. Maybe Vader naturally attracted people like that, people who saw raw untamed power and wanted to bend it their way.

Tarkin would simply have to contain that desire. The way he did with every other base urge towards a partner that they might not be comfortable with. Find consent, or channel and redirect it elsewhere. He was no stranger to that. Tarkin was not by nature a gentle person; there was plenty in him that had to be bound to those rules.

"What can I do for you now?" he asked, lifting the last of the chains away. "You remember all our talks about aftercare. What would make you feel most comfortable?"

Vader turned back towards him, the mask as inscrutable as ever. He lifted his arms, flexed them slightly before setting them down.

"Stay," he said. "You need not speak, but you are still euphoric. I would like to keep feeling your mind."

Tarkin's mind mostly felt awkward to him, right now. But it was a simple enough request, and he could honor it. "Of course."

Vader took his hand again, lightly, just the fingertips curled around Tarkin's. Tarkin let him do it. The last of the storm was still drizzling outside, in drops too fine and soft to be anything but white noise. The sun had entirely set, and the sky outside the window was inky, the usual shield-aurora invisible above the thick clouds.

Maybe there had been more than one purpose to this. Vader had said that he wanted to see Tarkin's cruelty; he'd wanted to know the things that Tarkin disliked about himself, and then he'd wanted Tarkin to do those things. To be vulnerable in that way.

But Vader wasn't invulnerable either. Maybe he'd known that. Maybe he'd wanted to act out, not just Tarkin's fears, but his own. To demonstrate, in a way Tarkin could not ignore, how close to reality those fears really lay.  _I will have you admit to it,_ he'd said. If he'd thought Vader's fears illogical this afternoon, unfounded, he didn't anymore.

Vader was used to being used. He had seethed with it. He was used to people wanting to tame him for their purposes, and Tarkin could not hide that desire. He could not hide any of his desires from Vader, really, even when he wanted to hide them from himself.

But Vader had let him in anyway. Vader had called his feelings fascinating, a delight. And Vader was sitting with him now, without any chains or strictures to hold him, his fingers lightly threaded through Tarkin's own.

Vader was giving him something, and Tarkin could hold it, if he tried. As carefully as the gift of a heart deserved.


	9. Giant Orbshell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Directly on the heels of his and Tarkin's role-switching experiment, Vader makes another proposition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to Amylion and liz_mo, who both asked for an unmasking scene waaaaaay back in... like... chapter 4 of "Holding Vader's Leash." (Actually, looking back at those comments, y'all both asked for a tank scene and there... isn't a bacta tank at hand on this planet at the moment. I'm dedicating it to you anyway, so there.)
> 
> If you like this, there'll be something you'll like in the next chapter, as well.

Vader listened to his breath and let his mind drift until the scene's strange feeling faded. He had been using a mild version of a meditation technique that often helped him endure Palpatine: one that left him aware and responsive, but calmed. Coming out of that state could be unpleasant, and he did so cautiously, a little at a time, using the feel of Tarkin's exhilarated mind as an anchor.

He had hardly needed that kind of protection in the end. He'd leaned into it when he felt apprehensive; he'd relied on it to keep him composed and silent when he felt unsure. But he'd mostly been correct, this afternoon, when he predicted that he could endure whatever Tarkin offered.

Tarkin's needs weren't like Palpatine's. They were in many ways simple, and very similar to what Tarkin felt when he played submissive. Some of it had been about his ego, of course, and some about pure sensation, and he'd known that Vader wasn't oriented towards submission deep down. But Tarkin loved when Vader held him still and made him suffer. It felt good to him. And on some base instinctive level, like most dominants, Tarkin had wanted to make Vader feel good in that same way.

Tarkin had wanted pleasure for Vader; he'd _admired_ Vader. He'd always done both of those no matter what role he played, but he'd admired Vader more intensely tonight. Having control had thrilled him, but when people _only_ wanted control, when Vader was nothing but an unruly weapon to them, they didn't look at him like that. Their breath didn't catch like that on the word _beautiful._

Vader felt strange about that, but it was a good result. He'd luxuriated in Tarkin's admiration, and in his guilty ecstasy when Vader pushed him to be crueller. And he'd savored even more the way Tarkin checked himself afterwards, fearing he'd gone too far. Vader felt that way constantly, always aware of his destructive power and how easily he could lose control. Let Tarkin share that feeling, for once. Let him be afraid of his own greedy heart.

Tarkin shifted slightly on the bed, his fingers curling further around Vader's. This hand-holding thing was... not terrible. "I'm a demanding person," he said. "I'm always going to want things that are outside your comfort zone. But I never meant to make you feel that-" He paused, working over the words, trying hard to assemble them in the right way. "That your worth to me depends on meeting them."

Vader turned to him. "That is not why I agreed to this."

"I know, but-"

Vader let go of his hand and stood, stretching his limbs. The scene had gone well. He'd gotten all of what he wanted. He didn't understand why some part of him still felt a little shaky, a little too vulnerable. Like the armor he wore had somehow become brittle.

He wanted Tarkin to stay unsure of himself. He didn't want to let that be wiped away with a simple apology. Vader didn't want to be made up with this way, like a concession, like the polite thing to do. Like a show of how magnanimous Tarkin could be, how careful about his own excesses, in the face of Vader's larger faults.

Like Palpatine, pretending to be kind again, after a punishment.

"I asked for your cruelty," Vader said. "Do not soften yourself for me."

Tarkin raised an eyebrow. "The scene is over, you know. I thought-"

"You have demands," said Vader. "I have accepted that about you. I am dangerous; you have accepted that about me. I will play at gentleness if you ask. But do not pretend that gentleness or decorum or _apologies_ can wash away what we are."

Tarkin frowned, and then sat up a little straighter, rolling his shoulders. "Fine. I meant what I said, but if you don't want an apology, I won't make one. What do you want instead?"

What Vader wanted was to keep Tarkin a little afraid. He could feel himself retreating into that strategy, the way he had on Mustafar. Tarkin wanted closeness, softness, vulnerability; Vader wanted Tarkin and his strange tender emotions to stay. But it was only bearable if he knew he wasn't the only one struggling with it. He had to do it _his_ way.

And he _could_ do it his way, if he was bold enough. Tarkin had shown him that tonight. Tarkin was full of demands, but Vader could make them, too. If they made sense to Tarkin, or if Tarkin wanted them enough despite misgivings, then Vader would get his turn at being obeyed. He could make Tarkin leave his comfort zone the same way Tarkin made him.

Vader wanted it to keep being his turn.

He made a decision.

"This goes both ways," Vader said. "Do you agree?"

"Yes," Tarkin said cautiously.

"You feared I would not want you if you tried to play dominant. Have I now proven otherwise?"

Tarkin was still giving him the cautious look, his fingers twining loosely in Vader's. "Yes, unless there's some problem I don't know about, I'd say that's been very satisfactory."

"This morning I said you would not want me anymore if you saw my face, and you denied it. Do you remember?"

Tarkin did straighten at that and pull away slightly, taken aback. Which, perversely, only gave Vader more desire to push. He _would_ keep Tarkin out of his element with this tactic, oh yes. "Yes. But-"

"Prove it."

It didn't seem to be the prospect of looking at Vader, specifically, that caused Tarkin's alarm. It was something more complex. "You can't breathe without your mask, I thought."

"I can in my meditation chamber. There is room for two in that space. You will accompany me there. Now."

"Vader," Tarkin said, "I'd be very happy to do that some time if you'd like, honored even, but when you've just come out of a type of scene that's new to you, it may not be the time. Are you sure-"

"Yes," said Vader, in a tone that brooked no disagreement.

He was not sure. But he liked how it felt, assuming control.

Besides, he'd dimly felt Tarkin's growing curiosity about his body. This morning when he described his bacta tank, and at lunch when they'd separated to take their meals, and this evening most of all. Tarkin had admired Vader in his suit and mask, but someday that would no longer be enough. Someday they'd be forced to address it head-on. And Vader hated waiting.

Probably, it would work. Tarkin would be okay with his face, or almost okay with it; his curiosity would be satisfied and then they could move on. Or, possibly, it would not work. Maybe Tarkin would never get Vader's hideous visage out of his mind; maybe he'd never admire Vader like he had tonight, never call him beautiful again.

In which case, better for that to happen now than later. Later, it would hurt even more.

*

**_Giant Orbshell._ ** _This imposing creature is Scarif's largest bivalve. It stands easily six to seven feet across, squatting on the ocean floor with its characteristic spherical, rippling shape. While its exterior is nearly as hard as permacrete, the orbshell spends most of its life open to the current, with its intricate and vulnerable mantle tissues exposed. Legends exist - though no case has ever been verified - of unwary divers being shut within its enormous shell and forgotten._

*

Tarkin was not at all sure what was going on.

He had noticed that Vader was beginning to test this relationship's limits. Some of his tests had been challenging, irritating. To see how much Tarkin could take before he lost patience. Others, though...

It was just possible that, on some level, this whole afternoon had been a test. Not consciously, of course; Vader didn't set intentional traps the way the Emperor did. But Vader had been occupied the whole day, in one way or another, with trying to push things further. Testing Tarkin's patience in the boathouse; finding a pretext to try gentleness for half a scene. Testing the reverse of their usual kink dynamic. That argument this afternoon had clearly been born out of very real fears, but its resolution had involved more testing, more pushing. Pressing Tarkin, in particular, to admit to his own weaknesses.

So this new demand almost fit. Another way of testing what this relationship would and wouldn't hold. Vader was so impulsive and aggressive anyway; maybe he would always be like this in a relationship, when his fears allowed, leaping straight into things with both feet.

Or maybe not. But Tarkin was curious to see, and he wanted this. He could ask, again, for caution; but Vader didn't seem to want the condescension that implied.

So he found himself following Vader obediently down the hall to the master bedroom, where the meditation chamber loomed up from the floor, an even blockier and more imposing black bulk than Vader himself.

Tarkin stood politely in parade rest. He was not at all sure of the procedure for this. Apparently Vader wasn't either, because he paused by the meditation chamber's controls, seeming to consider their practicalities for the first time. After a moment he turned away, towards the tidy black boxes on the dresser. "I will need my nighttime medicines. It is growing late, and most likely we will sleep after this."

Tarkin looked back and forth between him, the chamber, and the boxes. It was his own beach house's master bedroom, but he felt unaccountably like an intruder, standing stern and uniformed in a space meant for private care. "Would you like me to leave?"

Vader hesitated. "No."

Tarkin stood there, then, suppressing his nervousness. He'd been curious about this, too. He hadn't expected it to feel like an invasion, even after Vader invited him in. He wanted to say - just to have it in the open, just to make sure it wasn't misunderstood - that he didn't _need_ this. He wanted it, but his want shouldn't override Vader's comfort. But he'd tried a very similar assurance a few minutes ago, and all it had done was make Vader angrier.

Vader wanted to own this choice, and all the ugly things underneath it.

_I will have you admit to it,_ he thought ruefully. Tarkin was an inquisitive person. He'd been thinking invasive thoughts about Vader's body just this evening, with Vader's mind trapped intimately against his. He could say all that he wanted to about respecting Vader's boundaries; he could insist very sincerely that they never had to act on his desires. But his desires would still be _there_ , and Vader would feel them. If Vader wanted it too, then maybe Vader's impulsiveness really was the best way, instead of letting it hang over their heads.

"Strip to your undergarments," Vader instructed. "In the meditation chamber, my suit's heaviest layers will be removed. I will not have _you_ in full uniform."

That was logical enough, and Tarkin occupied himself taking off his uniform and folding it. He'd only worn it an hour or so, but it would need laundering anyway. He was used to being stripped at Vader's whim, but there was nothing sexual about it this time. Just a shedding of his own metaphorical armor.

Vader opened the boxes on the dresser and drew out two small packets. He turned away from Tarkin slightly, obscuring some of the details of the act, and his gloved fingers found a hidden catch in the suit, somewhere over his ribs. He opened some small port there and inserted each of the packets in turn, pausing to allow it to do whatever it did, with a small whir, before removing and discarding its husk.

Tarkin watched, curious. He wondered if this was a test. A way to give him some small view of one of Vader's medical realities, and see if he responded with revulsion, before moving on to the larger ones. There was nothing repellent about watching Vader take his medicine; it was all very tidy and quick. But he noted the slight hunch to Vader's shoulders, as if even this process ashamed him.

Tarkin was reasonably sure that what he'd told Vader this morning was correct. No matter what Vader's face looked like, Tarkin was not shallow enough to lose interest in Vader because of it. Tarkin was not squeamish about scarred or injured bodies, and he judged it likely that Vader's face wouldn't bother him at all. But even if it did, that wouldn't matter, once the mask was back on.

Except - it would matter to Vader, he knew. And Tarkin could not hide emotions from Vader, no matter how fleeting or unwanted. If he felt even the briefest mild moment of disgust, Vader would notice.

Tarkin _might_ be able to recover from a moment like that. He might not die choking. He might even salvage their relationship. But it would be very unpleasant, regardless.

The meditation chamber whirred open seemingly of its own accord, its toothed upper half rising to expose the space within. There was a single padded chair inside, not large enough for two, but Tarkin would be able to stand next to it with only minor awkwardness. The rest of the inside was a stark white, contrasting with its inky exterior, scattered here and there with small shelves or arms or indicator lights, with purposes Tarkin couldn't immediately identify.

Vader unhesitatingly strode in, seating himself. He looked comfortable in there, his own strange severity and that of the chamber somehow matching. He beckoned. "Come in with me. Or are you afraid?"

"You like it when I'm afraid," said Tarkin, stepping in after him.

The chamber whirred and shut itself itself as soon as he was inside. There was enough room for Tarkin to remain standing - barely - but it was abruptly very dark, the only light an eerie near-infrared glow from small panels at the sides. There was a hiss as the air began to pressurize, and Vader sat back in his chair, relaxing.

"Should I-" Tarkin started, and then Vader picked him up with the Force and unceremoniously shoved him to one side.

Tarkin spluttered, startled; he was now hanging at an awkward angle in midair. "What-"

"The chamber is not designed for two people," Vader explained. "I am holding you out of the way of its operation. It will be done in a minute."

Belatedly Tarkin noticed those mechanical arms beginning to reach down. He'd known that meditation chambers worked in this way - he'd supervised their installation enough times - but it was different seeing it from the inside, in this strange red glow. Vader lay in his chair as it tilted back; he let the chamber take the top of his helmet, the shoulderplate and cape. He seemed remarkably calm for someone being intimately pulled apart by a machine in the eerie darkness. But he had a lot of practice, of course.

The robot arms were slow in their work, and it gave Tarkin time to stew in anticipation. The chamber had warmed as it pressurized, even in comparison to Scarif's usual balmy air, becoming thick and humid and closed-in. He was glad that he'd taken off his uniform. The small dark chamber was already a bit claustrophobic and it would have been worse if he was sweating into formal clothes.

The meditation chamber removed several heavy pieces from Vader's armor: his belt and lightsaber, plates at his chest and his hips. They didn't remove the mask itself, only the heavy flared helmet behind it. Aside from the back of Vader's head, they didn't reveal any skin, nor any medical apparatus. They merely took away the most recognizable parts of Vader's shape. What was left looked less like a Dark Lord, more like just a very tall man lying down on his back, wrapped in heavy black fabric, wearing a mask.

Then the last arm retracted, and Vader abruptly pulled Tarkin down on top of him. Tarkin all of a sudden crouched there, straddling Vader's belly, with his knees braced against the sides of the now-horizontal chair and his arms holding him upright, his face about a foot from Vader's.

Vader reached up with his gloved hands to steady him, holding him by his sides. The chamber hadn't touched his prosthetic arms or legs at all; the points where they attached to the flesh-and-blood limbs were still invisible under the suit.

"You are afraid," said Vader, in an indulgent purr, as if it pleased him.

And Tarkin was not too far gone to snipe back. "Why? Are you telling me there's something to fear?"

"You can back out, you know. Even now. If you do not wish to see me. If it is too much for you."

Vader's body language a moment ago might have looked ashamed: but there was no quaver of shame in his voice. His tone was wicked, mocking, a parody of Tarkin's earlier attempts at caution. It always had soothed Vader when he could make Tarkin nervous. As if there were a law of conservation of fear.

Vader had prophesied to Tarkin, once, that someday ignoring a warning would kill him. Tarkin was sure real insecurity lay under that prodding tone. But if Vader was steadied enough to find humor in this, then Tarkin would accept the risk.

"I thought you were the one who hated waiting," he countered. "Go on."

Vader let go of Tarkin's sides.

"Do not touch the mask," he warned. "Its inner surface is delicate."

"Understood," said Tarkin, guiltily remembering what he'd done to the mask's outside only a few minutes ago.

With his real hands, Vader carefully took the mask and pulled it away from his face. It made a strange sound, several intricate medical mechanisms gently unattaching from each other; the disconnected breath pump hissed into the air for a moment before shutting itself off. Vader let go of the mask in midair and Force-guided it down to a holding shelf near the back of the chamber.

Tarkin looked down, speechlessly, into Darth Vader's actual eyes.

The face wasn't pretty, but he had never expected it to be. It was considerably better than what he'd secretly feared - Tarkin had seen worse burn victims before, freshly charred men who still horribly clung to life without the benefit of lips or noses or even eyes. Vader's face had all the parts in the appropriate places. He was heavily scarred, bald, and deathly pale. There were deep bags under his eyes, and his jowls sagged - an effect accentuated by the suit's high collar, which rose past his chin to hold his head in place, half-obscuring his mouth. But it was just a face. Nothing to be afraid of. What Tarkin felt, looking at it, wasn't disgust - quite the opposite.

Vader had a _face_. Not the fearsome masked visage that Tarkin had grown to adore, but a real flesh-and-blood face with actual facial expressions. Vader had eyes to look into, cheeks and a forehead that moved in the usual ways, and a soft shy mouth. Tarkin was good at reading faces, but he'd grown used to viewing Vader without one. Now abruptly, he could see it all. Vader's deep-set eyes, strange and yellowish - they hadn't been that color twenty years ago, had they? Surely not - never left his. Vader looked nervous, vulnerable, _open_ in a way Tarkin had never expected.

"Hello," Tarkin managed, overwhelmed into banality. "Look at you."

He watched a smile of amusement, the abortive beginning of a laugh, make its way across that face. Fading away, in turn, into nervous uncertainty. As if Vader saw something he wanted, something he couldn't quite trust.

Most people knew how to mask their emotions. Some people weren't very good at it, but everyone had tried. People like Tarkin, disciplined and successful at the highest levels of Imperial command, could keep a haughtily unreadable sabacc face through almost anything. But Vader, for eighteen long years, had not needed to do that. His mask had done it for him. All that time, there had been no reason to practice keeping anything hidden. He might not even remember how.

Vader's emotions were naked to Tarkin now, far more so than any ordinary person's, and it was such a contrast to his normal appearance that it took Tarkin's breath away. It was as if Tarkin had found some thorny, hard-shelled creature in the deep and carefully coaxed it open, to find its insides formless and soft for his taking. He had a brief, illogical urge to lean in and bite. Hold Vader's exposed heart between his teeth and swallow.

He could scarcely move.

"You do not mind it," said Vader, his brows drawn up in vulnerable confusion. As if he'd never really believed, deep down, that it was possible.

Vader's voice was different without the mask, the voice of a weak old man. Tarkin had expected that; he remembered what Vader's old voice, before his injury, had sounded like, so he'd known some sort of modulator must be involved in the new one. Vader seemed to be breathing at a level that sustained him, in this strange, thick, medically calibrated air, but it wasn't a deep or a vigorous breath, and it could only support speech to a mild degree.

Tarkin arranged his own face into an appropriate expression, cool and opaque and superior, knowing Vader would see through it anyway. "I told you I wouldn't."

And apparently no one else had ever made good on a promise like that. Maybe they'd tried and failed. Maybe Vader had never even let them try.

Tarkin reached up, and then paused, stopping himself. He wanted to try touching Vader's pale, scarred skin, but maybe he shouldn't; maybe it was sensitive. Maybe it would do something horrible, like sloughing off against his fingers. Maybe Vader just wasn't ready. "May I-?"

"Carefully," said Vader, his strange yellow eyes wide.

As gently as he could, then, Tarkin brushed the tips of his fingers against Vader's forehead.

The skin did not slough off. Its texture was strange, leathery, inelastic and somewhat uneven, as one might expect with scars. It was not offputting, and Tarkin stroked it lightly, bringing his fingertips to the side of Vader's head, to his cheeks. He could not tear his gaze from Vader's eyes. Vader reacted so visibly to every little movement; it seemed unfamiliar and emotional for him. Sometimes when Tarkin reached certain spots, Vader's eyes fluttered half-closed for a fraction of a second, or his head twitched, as if he wanted to lean into it and couldn't quite.

"How are you feeling?" Tarkin asked, wanting to be sure.

Vader didn't answer, but a range of expressions flickered across his exposed face. As if it was all so complicated that he couldn't settle on a single answer. What won out, after several seconds, was a vulnerable, wistful smile.

How long had it been since someone touched Vader? Not let him fuck them with the Force, not placed their hands on the outside of his armor, not pulled bits of life support into and out of him, but really touched his skin, for the sake of touching it, like this. Maybe no one had since his accident; maybe, since then, he'd had nothing at all.

Tarkin was enthralled. His fingers had strayed lower down Vader's cheek, and he noted the way Vader tilted his head up slightly to meet them, his lower lip rising a fraction of an inch above that confining collar. Vader's mouth was darker than the surrounding death-pale skin, slightly closer to a healthy person's tone. Tarkin brushed his thumb against its corner, feeling the edges of the lips with his fingertip. "May I-?"

"Carefully," Vader whispered.

Tarkin bent down and, feather-light, kissed him.

He'd meant it to be very brief, only a momentary buss of his closed lips against Vader's. But Vader, urgently and clumsily, kissed back. Tarkin stilled and let him, his eyes closing. There was no movement, no tongue, no real technique at all. Just a seemingly very strong need, on Vader's part, to keep their mouths pressed together a few seconds longer.

Then Vader relaxed away from him. Tarkin opened his eyes, moving to straighten back up. And instantly the Force caught him. Lifted him bodily in the air and shoved him, disorientingly, back against the wall of the meditation chamber.

Vader's bare face was as readable to him as before. Vader looked guilt-stricken, grief-stricken. As though they'd made some horrible mistake.

"What-?" said Tarkin, chagrined. He hadn't known when to stop, as ever. He'd _known_ this was all new and tender and fraught for Vader, and now he'd crossed some awful line. "Did I-?"

"Do not speak," Vader instructed, and Tarkin shut up. Then the mask was in Vader's hands, and he lowered it down over his face, clicking it back into place. There was a hiss as the chamber reversed whatever process warmed and pressurized its air, and those mechanical arms came down again, piecing Vader's suit back together bit by bit. His voice had returned to its usual deep and commanding state. "I need to be alone."

It took too long for the chamber to finish its work. Tarkin was seized with the irrelevant thought that it must be awkward for Vader, down there, waiting. Needing for whatever Vaderish reason to make everyone go away, and yet dependent on this slow machine to let him do so. Like being stuck with something awful in an airlock.

"You did not harm me," Vader added, almost as an afterthought. "But I need to be alone."

The meditation chamber whirred open, its jagged upper half rising like a maw full of teeth, and Tarkin was unceremoniously dropped to the floor outside. It shut again only a moment later. A polished sphere of black in the center of Tarkin's master bedroom, armored and pristine, as if he'd never been inside of it at all.

*

**_Diamond-Scaled Grouper._ ** _This sizable fish, known for its reflective scales and its distinctive toothless mouth, is constantly hungry. While the mouth may look soft, the jaw and throat are lined with heavy plates of bone. The diamond-scaled grouper's feeding strategy is to suck water in through its mouth and clamp down crushingly on whatever enters. In confined or overcrowded conditions, or when other food is scarce, the dim-witted grouper has been known to feed this way on its own polygynous mates, or even on its children._

*

Vader's hands were trembling, which almost never happened.

In the many years since his accident, Vader had taken off his mask and been stared at by various people: medical attendants, Royal Guards, house servants, his master. Palpatine was cruel about it because Palpatine was cruel about everything, but most of the medical attendants had impeccable bedside manners. And even the politest ones always felt a hidden core of pity and disgust. Vader had assumed for a very long time that it would never be otherwise. People who'd caught feelings for him could protest that they wouldn't mind, but he'd known better than to believe them. He'd never freely offered before what he'd offered to Tarkin today.

Yet Tarkin, true to his promise, _hadn't_ minded. He wasn't blind to Vader's ugliness; he'd been aware of the scars. But it was a matter of perspective. None of those other people had any reason to like looking at Vader; they'd simply been professionals doing a job. But Tarkin, no matter what he saw, had been looking at the face of a person he loved.

And that had been... fine. Overwhelming, but Vader was used to being overwhelmed. It was worth it. Tarkin's hand on his face had hurt a little, despite Tarkin's best efforts; but it had come with such a good mental sensation. That had been worth it, too.

Vader had said yes to the kiss, hoping it would feel like the fingers, but even more so. He'd savored that contact, for the briefest of moments, wondering at its intimate strangeness.

And then, for just a second, it hadn't felt strange, but _familiar._

_That_  was what had tripped the catastrophic wire in his mind. He was surprised and angry that something so simple could break him, after all the other daring and dangerous things he'd tried today. Vader could handle perversity and pain; he had fucked so many people in such deliciously awful ways. He'd thought he was inured to it all. But he'd always had his armor on. No one had kissed him, not on his actual mouth, since-

It still hurt more than he could bear, after all these years, to think Padmé's name.

He'd have to bear it, though, because it was all echoing in his mind now. The way her lips felt against his; the way she'd looked at him; the gentle warmth he'd always been able to feel in her mind, like a beacon, like a home. But also the way her throat had felt in his tightening hand. The tears in her eyes. Her body, unconscious and crumpled, on Mustafar's ashen ground, and the way he'd just left it there, too consumed by rage even to pause before the next awful battle.

His hands were still trembling, and prosthetic hands like his didn't tremble easily. He wanted to stop the shaking, at least. He wanted not to break anything; accidentally breaking a meditation chamber could be very problematic. He tried to slow his mind, to listen to his breath and drop into deep meditation, but it didn't help much. He wouldn't have been a proper Sith Lord if he didn't have a few things like this inside him. Wounds that it was impossible to heal, inexhaustible wells of rage and pain and grief, deep enough to fuel the Dark Side's most spectacular horrors.

Padmé would never have loved the monster Vader was now. That was a fact he'd pondered many times. She and Tarkin were polar opposites in so many ways: a pacifist and a war criminal, one a famous model of rule by compassion and the other even better-known for sheer open ruthlessness. One overflowing with color and beauty, to the point of excess; the other, stiff and strict in his uniform gray. Even his beach house was grayish. Vader had fallen so far, to want this.

He did want it, even now, and that was what shamed him. He wanted to be looked at the way Tarkin looked at him. Vader wasn't worthy of any of the things that his old self loved. But somehow he had found this anyway: a lover wicked enough to come close to understanding him, yet who still wanted to give him good things. A lover who knew the sort of monster he was, and what the risks were, and who still pressed close to him, again and again, generous and twisted and caring what he thought of it all.

It would never not hurt. He would never not be grieving. He would never not have the urge to push people away, whether it was Tarkin or some other, hypothetical, hapless lover. To save them from his own worst side, or himself from their manipulations. It would never not terrify him, wanting this. It would never not feel like betraying his memories. But he wanted it.

He pushed his consciousness away from his body, trying desperately to be distracted. There wasn't enough Dark Side close at hand to absorb him. There were the little creatures of the island, corrupt in their ordinary, natural ways. There was the planet's core, so far down and well-controlled that it barely felt like magma. And there was Vader, radiating wrongness more brightly than any of it, on levels nothing here but himself had the senses to detect.

Vader watched himself from that distance, then. The way he sometimes watched the churning mantle below his fortress. A natural process; nothing that he could or should control. Only the Dark Side doing what the Dark Side did. He watched his own pain like that for a long time, losing track of the hours, until he felt that he could settle in again.

Until he could bear to contemplate what the fuck he wanted to do _now._

Vader had told himself that he could never be in love again. Not a rule, but a fact; another way he was broken. But it was only a self-protective lie. He'd believed his heart was dead, but really his heart was like the rest of him. It had dragged itself screaming through the ash, a burned and broken husk of its former self, hanging on to life through sheer cussedness. Forming attachments in all the wrong ways, too many, too quickly, too close to his other wounds. Greedy as only the living were greedy. Beating. Wanting.

Even Palpatine, in the end, hadn't been able to take that from him.

He would give in to it, then, with his full Sith self. The same way he gave in to anger and terror, hate and lust. This, too, was power. It didn't matter that it hurt. At least this one, unlike his other pains, occasionally unfolded into beauty.

Even masked, he still felt the echo of Tarkin's kiss on his mouth, as the air mechanically blew in and out. He let it settle there and merge with his other sense-memories, as if it belonged with them. He did not try to forgive himself. Vader had grown used, a long, long time ago, to being unforgivable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S: It didn't fit into Vader's actual train of thought, pacing-wise, and it's not really important to the story, but I am amused to note that Padmé and Tarkin also have several similarities! Both are skilled politicians and keen observers of other people; both are quite powerful in specific societal ways that have nothing to do with the Force; both have strong and somewhat abstract ideals; both, from Vader's perspective, are impossible to argue with once they've made up their mind about something. They're just, like, polar opposites on the D&D alignment chart, is all.
> 
> SEVERE frickin' polar opposites.
> 
> Anyway: Thanks for reading my ridiculous purple prose about Darth Vader's emotions; comments are, as always, love. <3


	10. Corpsefish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vader decides it's time to ask the questions he's been avoiding.

"Get up," said Vader's voice, low and harsh in the darkness.

Tarkin startled awake and reached halfway for his blaster before remembering that it was only Vader and that they were, in fact, on a date. He pushed himself up to a sitting position and scowled.

After being ejected from the meditation chamber, he had washed up and gone to bed with some difficulty. Once the initial shock wore off, the problem had been clear. Vader wanted to be close, but he had no sense of his own limits and needs. Perhaps he'd never had one, or perhaps Tarkin's demands this morning had spooked it out of him. So now he was Vaderishly pushing forward into every form of closeness he could think of, one after another, without checking to see if it was a good idea or not. Stopping only when he hurt himself sufficiently that going onward was impossible. Tarkin needed, rather urgently, to end that.

Vader loomed in his bedroom doorway now, black and reflective against the duller black of the hallway, lit by the glare from the room's electronics, such as the clock by Tarkin's bedside and the blinking indicators on his own armor. And by the stars: the sky had cleared and Scarif's starry nighttime aurora was visible again, faintly illuminating the now-calmed sea.

That he'd shown up to bark orders at this time of night meant one of two things. Either he had yet another urgent bad idea, or he'd been sufficiently panicked by that kiss in the meditation chamber that he was about to order Tarkin away again, like on Mustafar.

"Do you realize it's midnight?" Tarkin said, scowling.

"I have made a decision," said Vader. "Last night I had questions for you, and you stated the terms under which you would answer them. I accept your terms. I am ready to ask."

It was the first of those two unappealing options, then. Tarkin groped for a bedside lamp and flicked it on, squinting at Vader in the light. "No."

Vader looked displeased. "Have you altered your terms?"

"Not at all," Tarkin said coldly. "What has been altered is my assessment of your competence to make decisions in this relationship. I don't know if it's that you've never understood your own needs, or if I spooked you so badly this morning that you've suddenly ceased to consider them. But you threw yourself into a new kink dynamic this evening, and before you'd even had time to process that, you ordered me to your meditation chamber to do another new intimate thing. I gave you several opportunities to slow down or check yourself and you refused them. Then you - panicked, or whatever it was that happened there. And now without any explanation nor any mention of how we can avoid that outcome in the future, you've arrived again to demand that we share ourselves in yet another new way. I will do no such thing until you've explained to my satisfaction what the hell is going on. And, for the record, Vader, I'd be a poor partner for you if I chose otherwise. I'd be letting you use me as the tool with which you harm yourself. I shouldn't even have agreed to the meditation chamber."

Vader paused, a full breath. When he spoke again, there was something ironic in his tone. "You are telling me that you will not answer my questions until I have explained what went wrong today. And why I was distressed."

"Yes, Vader."

"What do you think this is, if not an attempt to explain?"

Tarkin frowned more deeply, because that made no sense, and then he belatedly remembered what his terms had been. He'd said, last night, that Vader could ask him anything about his family and his past. But only if Vader answered the same questions in return.

This was about Vader's wife, then. The memory of her was somehow tied up with all this, and Vader was ready to tell him all of it _._

In a way, Tarkin hadn't been wrong. This was a new, raw, dangerous intimacy, and he could still refuse. He could insist that Vader tell him straightforwardly what the problem had been, instead of playing games. But it appeared that, with no other conscious intent than to make Vader back off, Tarkin had designed a useful structure for him. By asking first, Vader could model for Tarkin exactly what he wanted to be asked. Vader could ensure he had the reciprocity he cared about: that he wasn't the only one forced to reveal difficult or personal things. And then Tarkin would have the responsibility of asking the questions back - keeping Vader grounded, making sure he told what he needed to, even if Vader's courage began to fail.

It was not a typical method, but there were worse ways of disclosing one's trauma. Tarkin could handle this.

Tarkin sighed shortly and pushed the covers away, swinging his legs out over the edge of the bed. "Fine. But we're going to do this like civilized people. I'm going to put a robe on and we're going to go down and have some tea in the kitchen while we talk."

"As you wish," said Vader, stepping out of the doorway to make room.

Tarkin blearily stood, shrugged into his robe, and padded into the hall, turning on lights as he went. Vader followed. By the time they were halfway down the stairs, cozily illuminated against the night, he felt that his head was clearing. There was something pleasurable about sneaking downstairs after bedtime for a talk, as the quiet nighttime waves bobbed outside.

"The tea will take several minutes brewing," Tarkin observed, "but you can start your questions now, if you'd like."

"Very well," said Vader, as Tarkin reached the bottom of the stairs. "Here is my first question, Wilhuff Tarkin. Have you ever been married?"

"I was," Tarkin said lightly, stepping into the kitchen and turning that light on, too. So he'd guessed correctly what it was that Vader wanted to tell him. He headed for the kettle, which was sitting patiently on the counter. "For a couple of decades, in fact. But we divorced a long time ago."

Vader stayed in the kitchen's doorway, intense and inscrutable. "What was her name?"

"Thalassa Motti. And then Thalassa Tarkin, of course, but I believe she's gone back to the Motti name."

"Did you love her?"

Tarkin filled the kettle and clicked it into operation, setting it down as it began to heat its allotment of water. He'd have to phrase this delicately for someone like Vader. The Jedi Order had required celibacy, and the rumor about Vader was that he'd secretly run off and eloped with someone anyway. That suggested a deeply romantic outlook, perhaps to the exclusion of practicality.

"You have to understand," he said, "that in the Outer Rim's most powerful families, marriage isn't only about the feelings of two people. Particularly in the days of the Republic, when such families held more of a de facto say in things than the local excuses for sector governments. It was more about an alliance between larger groups, each influencing the balance of political and economic influences over multiple worlds. I'm not incapable of love, and I wasn't unfond of Thalassa, but I didn't marry her for love. She loved me a bit more, I think."

Vader sounded unamused. "Why did it end, then? If it was such a _practical_ choice?"

Interesting that he asked _why_ and not _how_. Tarkin made a mental note of that. He poured a bit of half-heated water into his teacup, swirling a bit to let the material warm. "Well, it's as I told you this afternoon. I've always put my work first, and my schedule is... difficult. You've seen it; yours is, too. Ironically, my accomplishments helped strengthen the Outer Rim's central command, which made the old forms of political alliance less important. Thalassa had always admired me, but she felt neglected, among other complaints, and eventually she decided it was better for her to go."

Vader's helmet tilted, as if he was trying to assimilate something unpleasant. "You did not try to stop her."

"Of course I did," Tarkin said calmly, picking out the variety of tea he wanted and placing the container and some measuring spoons down next to the pot. "That's what family court is for."

It had been an ugly battle, even by family law's usually-ugly standards. He was describing it as simply as he could, but at the time, in the thick of it, everything had been anguished and hideous. Tarkin had fought Thalassa's terms of separation with his usual fearsome ruthless drive, secretly hoping she'd see reason and return, not realizing until later that those actions had driven her further away. Both of the very powerful extended families in question had also, often underhandedly, tried to bend things their way. He was fairly sure that Eriadu's divorce lawyers still flinched when they spoke of it, over a decade later.

"Did you have children?" said Vader.

Ah, _there_ it was: the original question from last night. "Yes. Two. One by the usual method, and one adopted as a ward after-" He was interrupted by the kettle whistling, and he pressed the appropriate buttons on its side. "Well. Two, at any rate." He emptied the warmed teacup into the sink, and poured fresh simmering water into the teapot.

"Where are they now? Why do you never speak of them?"

Tarkin measured out the correct portion of crumbled tea leaves and set them into the pot to steep. "They're successful adults with their own careers. And they've decided we are no longer on speaking terms."

Vader loomed in the doorway, looking tense. Tarkin set a small timer and mentally counted out a few of those mechanical breaths, waiting to see if he was done with his questions now. This was a topic Tarkin disliked, and it occurred to him that it might distress Vader, too. Vader, presumably, longed for his lost wife. Tarkin had once had what Vader never did; he'd had his own family openly, respectably, in seeming security. But his priorities had been elsewhere. When it came to a choice between them and the Empire, he'd chosen as he always had.

He waited it out, several of Vader's rhythmic breaths. But if Vader had any criticisms beyond those he'd already voiced, he kept them to himself. "It is your turn."

Tarkin took a long breath of his own, steeling himself. He had some idea of what Vader's answers would be. He wanted to ask; he wanted to hear it from Vader himself. He also knew he'd be delving into a gulf of pain far deeper than any of his own. It would have been foolish not to feel a little afraid.

"Were you ever married, Vader?" he asked.

"I-" said Vader, and Tarkin could almost see it happen under the mask, how he had prepared one answer, and how he faltered and regrouped into a safer one. "Anakin Skywalker was married. _I_  have never been."

Tarkin had noted before Vader's hesitance to identify with his former self, or even sometimes to admit that self's existence. In Tarkin's opinion, it was sophistry. But he could allow Vader to speak this way if it made things easier. The meaning was still clear.

"What was her name?" he asked, careful to keep to the script. These specific questions, in this specific order.

Vader hesitated again, longer. When he finally made his answer, his voice was strained. "Padmé Amidala Naberrie."

Tarkin raised his eyebrows, taken aback. "The Senator from Naboo? I remember her."

"The Senator, yes."

Tarkin had not even come close to guessing that one. To the extent that he'd had guesses at all, he'd assumed some anonymous unimportant woman, perhaps a starstruck rescuee, or perhaps - more daringly - another Jedi. How strange. Tarkin had always been interested in politics, but it hadn't been a part of his job in those days, so he mostly remembered Senator Amidala from the news, and from Palpatine's occasional mentions. She hailed from the same obscure planet as Palpatine; she'd been its queen at some point, and at a very young age she'd helped clear the way for Palpatine's nomination as Supreme Chancellor. But for the rest of her career, she hadn't been in his faction. Instead she'd been one of the loudest voices in a progressive clique which protested each petty expansion of the soon-to-be-Emperor's power, and which opposed everything to do with the Clone Wars.

Odd that an ardent pacifist would have fallen for one of the Jedi Order's fiercest generals. But then, the Jedi had always absurdly claimed to be pacifists, too. Tarkin supposed they'd both been young, attractive, fiery in spirit and uncertain of their futures as the galaxy changed around them. Relationships had been built on less.

He also remembered that Senator Amidala had died the day the Jedi Order fell; the same day Palpatine announced himself as Emperor. Tarkin couldn't recall the cause of death. He only remembered it as a news item, a brief holo-clip showing a grand state funeral, and as a mournful quieting of a part of the Senate which would otherwise have caused difficulty at that delicate time. That timing was very interesting. He'd already known that Vader had taken his name at about that time, cutting ties with the traitorous Order that raised him, and that it was not far removed from when he'd had his accident with the lava. Had it all happened at once, then, every single possible loss in one sudden avalanche? It almost made sense, if so, the way Vader talked about his former self like a dead man.

"Did you love her?" Tarkin asked, having already surmised the answer. "Or did Anakin, rather?"

"More than I have ever loved anything."

Tarkin swallowed hard, looking at Vader in the doorway. He knew this was the part that would hurt most. The timer on his countertop chimed, and he ignored it. "Why did it end, then?"

"I killed her," said Vader, bald and flat.

He did not elaborate. In some sense this was the confession that Tarkin had wanted. But it was by no means a complete answer. Tarkin opened his mouth to speak, but Vader drew himself up first, suddenly enraged.

"You are not surprised," he growled. "All this time, you wanted to make me tell you, but you _knew._ " He thrust out a hand, and Tarkin was yanked towards him unwillingly, not by the neck - although there was something unpleasantly chokeish in the way Vader held his hand - but by a band of Force that had closed around his chest. He was drawn straight up against Vader, an inch from his chestplate, an inch above the floor. Perversely, even hovering, he still had to look upward to match gazes with Vader's stern mask. "Tell me who informed you, and I will hunt them down."

"Stop," Tarkin snapped, in such an imperious tone that Vader actually did respond; he lowered Tarkin slightly, so his toes brushed the floor. The Force-vise remained in place. "Nobody told me, not in the sense you mean. I had suspicions, largely inferences I drew from your own behavior. You haven't been nearly as secretive as you think. Put me down."

Vader hesitated, then abruptly let go. Tarkin's heels hit the ground with an uncomfortable thud.

"Explain," Vader growled.

Tarkin took a step back, so he'd have room to breathe instead of talking to Vader's shoulderplate. "That you were married to a woman was a rumor I did hear from others. Only the fact of it, not other details. Her identity, I hadn't known at all. That you killed her, I inferred myself. You might recall that on Mustafar you told me that you'd killed people you'd cared for; you were terrified you might slip up and do it to me next. But that was a fear that only appeared when I displayed a romantic interest; you'd shown no such aversion to casual play. And your servants had already mentioned to me that all your casual submissives survived. I put those and other such pieces together and made an educated guess." He looked up at Vader and squared his shoulders. Now that Vader wasn't actually grabbing him, he wasn't afraid. "I understand your secrets are important to you, but try looking at it from another angle. I've known since Mustafar, and I'm still here."

Vader regarded him for a long breath. He seemed to have been successfully defused from violent rage back into mere brooding. "What else have you inferred about me?"

The corner of Tarkin's mouth twitched. "That's an overly broad question, and if I tried to answer, we'd be here all night. Besides, it's my turn to ask the questions. I need to get my tea. Stay there."

He went to the counter and regrouped, pouring the tea from the pot through a strainer into his teacup. It was slightly over-steeped, but not undrinkable. He pulled a small lever to move a filter through the pot and remove the remaining loose leaves. Then he brought the teacup to his lips. The smell was soothing, grounding, as was the feel of the warmed cup in his hands. The taste was adequate. He'd made better tea.

Tarkin looked back at Vader speculatively. "How are you doing with this so far? Can I ask that?"

"I can endure," said Vader. His tone was strangely reminiscent of this evening when he'd stoically played submissive. If anything, this likely hurt him more than kneeling had. But neither one of them was doing this for pleasure.

Watching Vader bow to him this evening had been a rare treat. But, most days, that wasn't really what Tarkin wanted. He wanted, not to own Vader outright, but just to have the thrill of _steering_ him like this. He wanted Vader's full ravening self within his grasp, not tamed, not safe at all, but aware enough to look back when Tarkin looked at him, and to answer when called.

"That's good," Tarkin said, quietly steeling himself. "Because I'm about to do something you might not enjoy. You see, while you did give me an answer just now, it didn't fully address the question. So I'll ask you again.  _Why_ did it end?"

Vader's hesitance, this time, was even longer than before.

"I am not sure what happened," Vader confessed. "A great number of things had happened at once. I had made a very great sacrifice for her sake, and instead of accepting it, she turned against me. I... lashed out. I did not mean to kill her."

That account of things was Vaderish enough to be plausible to Tarkin. He remembered how it had set Vader's temper off this afternoon, when Tarkin refused his overzealous vow of protection. On Mustafar, it had hurt him past rationality - to the point of needing medication - when he had not been allowed to save Tarkin. Perhaps Vader had always been like that, needing to know he was the strong one, the guardian of the people he cared for, even more than he needed them safe.

"Go on," he said. Vader needed him pitiless for this, and so he would be pitiless. Vader needed to expel this story whole and have it done with.

Vader hunched slightly in the kitchen doorway, avoiding Tarkin's gaze. "I injured her. She was alive when I left. I felt that. I - may have felt it incorrectly; my mind was unsettled, but I believed she was alive. And - later, when I was able to attend to it again, I could no longer feel her. I could feel that something was wrong. I did not understand," Vader continued. He looked down at the floor. "My master had to inform me of what I had done."

Tarkin raised his eyebrows slightly, having to fight to suppress a much stronger reaction. He had not guessed that the Emperor played a role in this story. He did not know if Palpatine had become Vader's master before or after this point; but he did know that Vader and Palpatine had already known each other for years. Surely Vader couldn't have been _that_ naive. "And you took him at his word?"

Vader glanced up at him defiantly. "I could feel that it was true."

Well, Tarkin wasn't going to argue with the Force. Not aloud. Still, it was altogether too convenient. Of course Palpatine had happened to be there for Vader at his darkest hour. Of course he'd said exactly the words that would break Vader most deeply, as soon as his Order was no longer there to coax the pieces back together. As soon as Vader's life held an opening for a new master. Palpatine had his own Force abilities; what might he have been able to fool Vader into feeling, at such an unsettled time?

Tarkin considered it a moment, and then abruptly decided that he was not touching this topic with a twenty-foot shock stick. Not when Vader's own chosen questions were already causing him such pain. He and Vader clearly needed to have a talk about Palpatine, but... later. Delicately.

Which meant there was nowhere else to go but to the last question.

"Did you have children?" Tarkin asked, dreading the answer.

Vader straightened slightly, but he was looking away again. Not even out the window, but at the common room's entirely uninteresting carpeted floor. "She was pregnant with our first when she died."

Tarkin quietly let out a breath. He remembered when Thalassa had been expecting their first. Even given their relatively unromantic marriage, and the many other things occupying Tarkin's attention, it had been a heady time. Full of delighted excitement and fear, and the urge to plan out all of their future hopes at once in excruciating detail, and both tempers running high for no reason at all.

No wonder it had distressed Vader, finding that bin of toys, and considering for the first time that Tarkin might know what expecting a child was like. That, for Tarkin, perhaps it had ended in birth and joy, and not in astonishing tragedy. It wasn't at the center of Vader's trauma, but it was an exceptionally cruel finishing flourish.

Tarkin moved towards the living room, his half-full teacup still in hand. "I'm glad you told me all this, Vader. Thank you for trusting me with it. Let's sit down; I'd like to talk more informally."

Vader followed him to the common room and arranged himself heavily on one of the couches. Tarkin alighted next to him, finishing his tea. The room was well-lit, but Tarkin could see the waves gently breaking in the darkness outside. Further out, he thought he saw a delicate, bluish luminescence under the waves. Sailor's Lanterns, congregating in the aftermath of the storm.

He looked sideways at Vader and tried to assess his mood. Vader had been angry, and full of old grief and shame. He looked like he was brooding still, morose, but in control of himself; after that one outburst, he'd rallied well. Vader was used to bearing these hurts, Tarkin supposed, even if he didn't normally speak of them.

Vader was full of whole intricate seas of pain and loss. Even after this painful confession, Tarkin was sure he only saw its edges. Some - like the bit with Palpatine, just now - lay at depths Tarkin didn't wish to dive to yet. Perhaps he'd never see it all. Perhaps no one but Vader ever could.

But Tarkin didn't _need_ to know all of it. All he had to know was that Vader could hold to his own boundaries appropriately. Tarkin had already taught Vader better habits as a dominant. He could do this, too, if Vader was willing to learn.

"Let me make sure I have this all correctly," he said. "I know we didn't have this talk for the sake of having it; you wanted to explain what upset you before. I'm gathering we must have done something that brought up these memories for you. Was it in the meditation chamber, or earlier?"

Vader hesitated more than he should have, and for a moment Tarkin thought perhaps he'd misjudged, perhaps Vader was quiet because he'd literally lost his power of speech.

"I... am not sure," he said finally. "In many ways, this is always with me. But what I meant to explain was the meditation chamber. When I pushed you out."

"It was when I kissed you, wasn't it? That's when your memories became intolerable. Something about how I did it was wrong."

" _Wrong?_ " Vader asked, a deep irony in his voice. "Why do you call it wrong?"

"Because it distressed you." Tarkin folded his arms. "I saw that look on your face. You were so anguished that you tried to literally throw me away. I know I pick at you, Vader, but if I meant to distress you to _that_ degree, you'd know. There'd be negotiation."

Vader gently let go of Tarkin's hand. He looked down again, as he had in the kitchen. "You and I do wrong things all the time. Our feelings have nothing to do with it. What we did tonight was not wrong; it was right. So right that I could not bear it."

Tarkin pressed his hand to his mouth in thought, suppressing a rather flattered but unhelpful rush of pleasure. Vader had liked the kiss, then, just as he had initially seemed to. He had felt some positive emotion, and _that_ was what had triggered his memories, somehow.

"You felt something," he guessed. "Something... physical, or mental, or both. Something you hadn't felt since you'd been with your wife."

"No one has kissed me," said Vader. "There are submissives who have laid kisses on my covered hands, on my armor. But I do not _feel_ that. Not with my own skin. No one has ever kissed my mouth before but her."

Tarkin let out his breath, letting himself digest that.

He should have guessed. He almost had: he'd known that Vader was vulnerable, without the mask, and that it was a vulnerability he hadn't shared with many. He just hadn't trusted that it could be something so simple.

His first urge was to reassure Vader that they didn't have to do it again, not if it hurt this much. But that was the wrong approach, and Vader would resent it. Vader was, in his own strange belligerent way, a romantic; and he'd been starved of this sort of affection for a very long time. To tell him that he couldn't have it, because he wasn't sufficiently competent with his own emotions, would be cruel. He merely needed a bit of help handling it.

"You aren't the first, you know," he said. "To experience something that feels very good, even necessary, but that you can't quite handle. There are strategies for dealing with that. I know how you hate to go slow, but it might help in this instance; you can give yourself time to think about what you'd need, to bolster yourself, next time you want to try. I'll still be here."

"You want me to _think,_ " Vader said. "What do you think I have been doing? I have been meditating while you were asleep. My reaction took me by surprise, because it was the first, because I had not thought it through. But I will not be surprised next time. I know what bolsters I need. Most are within me, and are my own concern. The other is simply for you to be aware." He raised his masked face defiantly. "If all I had wanted was to explain to you what happened, that could have waited until morning. I do not only want that. I woke you because I want you to understand what I am asking of you next."

Tarkin raised his eyebrows slightly. This, he knew, would be the crux of it: whether Vader really _had_ made a better plan than before. Or whether he was beating his helmeted head against the same trauma-walls, over and over. And if his plan was internal, they wouldn't know until they tried. But at least there was a plan this time. "What would that be?"

"Anakin Skywalker is dead. But _I_ am alive. I will not let my body belong to the dead." He took Tarkin's hand again and tugged it, possessive and ungentle. "If it believes that it does, then it will simply need retraining. I want you to come back to my chamber, Tarkin. Now that you know all this. I want you to kiss me again."

*

**_Corpsefish._ ** _This deep-sea creature is beautiful in its natural habitat, with a long narrow body and reflective scales. Unfortunately, human activity has badly disturbed some of the corpsefish's haunts. When piles are driven into the sea floor, the resulting cloud of dust confuses the fish and causes them to float to the surface. The resulting decompression wracks their bodies, twisting them into the ghastly and motionless form shown here. Bycatch by fishing trawlers has a similar effect. However, the corpsefish also displays an unusual form of resilience. In an hour or two, when the sea clears, a floating corpsefish will suddenly twitch. The shock of ascension having worn off, it regains control of its damaged muscles and comes seemingly back to life, making its way back down to the depths. Analysis of scarring within mature corpsefish specimens suggests that some undergo this cycle several times over many years - that, at least sometimes, the seemingly dead fish survives._

*

Tarkin crouched atop Vader in the meditation chamber's red gloom, hoping that this wouldn't prove to have been a terrible idea. Vader's strange eyes looked up at him from his unmasked face, full of fear and longing and determination.

"You're not going to shut me out again," Tarkin instructed. Asserting it, instead of asking, felt better to him. Even in matters as horrifyingly tender as these, he did not beg. "You're going to stay with me this time."

"Yes," Vader answered.

Tarkin ran a hand along the outside curve of Vader's face. He liked to take people by the chin, but Vader's chin wasn't reachable under that high stiff medical collar, even when he tilted his mouth up. "Ready?"

"Yes."

With great delicacy, Tarkin bent and kissed him again. As lightly as before; shorter, in spite of Vader's eager press against him. He pulled back, after a half second, to examine Vader's expression. There was such pain in those strange yellow eyes, such conflict, and yet a will that hadn't wavered.

Vader did not enjoy receiving pain, and so he had never seen firsthand just how far Tarkin's sadism could go. There was a part of him that loved to stay cold and controlled while he tore out someone's heart by the roots. A part that loved it when they cried. That wasn't what this was about, of course; Vader wasn't letting Tarkin into his traumas as a show of submission, but as an attempt at healing, a process that Vader designed and controlled and of which Tarkin saw only the edges. But Tarkin did have some experience with intentionally eliciting emotions of this size. With handling them as close to safely as such pursuits ever could be.

"You're here," he murmured, keeping contact with Vader using his fingertips. "In your meditation chamber, on Scarif. You're with me now. Stay with me, Vader."

"Do it again," Vader growled.

For several minutes it went like that, each kiss as careful as disarming a detonator. Each a delicate maneuver through a field of pain. The angles varied, the duration increased, but each one was its own separate experiment.

Tarkin could feel when that started to change. When Vader began to relax subtly, to shift under him; there was grief in his eyes, still, but it was no longer occupying his full attention. He had space around it to think about enjoying himself, to think about moving. He reached up with his gloved hands, pressed them to the small of Tarkin's back, as if to keep him there.

"Not too fast," Tarkin chided, his face inches from Vader's. "One thing at a time, remember."

This was working, but Tarkin was not naive enough to think it meant Vader's trauma was _solved_. Very likely it never would be. Every new act would hold its own hidden mines. Every time they left each other and returned, they would have to ease back into it, dust the cobwebs away. It was poignant and ironic and delightful, to think that Vader would always have to slow himself. To wait like that.

"You need not worry about my hands," Vader replied, amused. "There is no skin there for you to disturb."

Tarkin chuckled and kissed him again, trying the corner of Vader's mouth instead of head-on. That brought on a small purr of surprise and a pleased expression. Gradually, as Vader egged him on, he tried further variations. He kissed up and down Vader's cheeks, his forehead, the bridge of his nose. It became a game; once or twice, he saw an attempt at laughter cross Vader's face, stymied by his breath which was too shallow and weak to support such things. A few times, he saw a flicker of fear or an overlarge pain, and he slowed; but Vader really was recovering quicker now. Vader had passed through the worst of it.

"You're with me now," Tarkin repeated, for at least the dozenth time; it was no longer a necessary anchor so much as an endearment. "You're mine now. I'm not going anywhere. You couldn't make me go away if you tried."

He tried, experimentally, a bit of tongue. Just a light flick between Vader's half-parted lips. Vader coughed, surprised, and Tarkin drew back, only to feel Vader pull him in again insistently. After a few more unsuccessful tries, they determined that putting much of anything at all inside Vader's mouth was not going to work. Not because of trauma, but because he hadn't eaten solid food for eighteen years, and his ability to breathe was erratic enough already. His system was physically not up for it, even in these simple ways.

"I hate being broken," Vader growled, and Tarkin was startled by his candor. Vader didn't often complain aloud, unprompted, about his health. "I want-"

Tarkin smiled knowingly, silencing him with another shallow kiss. "I know what you want."

He redoubled his efforts at the kinds of kisses Vader could stand. He roamed gently over every bit of skin he could reach. He brushed his lips against the edges of Vader's ear. He touched the tip of his nose lightly to Vader's; he flicked his own eyelashes across Vader's brow. He ran his hand up the bare back of Vader's head, to the extent that their position allowed without jostling, and cradled him that way. He didn't want an available inch to remain that didn't carry the memory of him. Not stronger than the past - Tarkin was not quite that presumptuous - but alongside it, brighter for its recency.

Vader wasn't using the Force, which was interesting. Vader seemed to be focused on his real body. That was probably good for him. Tarkin was aware of that body now in ways he didn't often have occasion to be. The thick, cloying air of the chamber was already heated to body temperature, so he did not feel Vader's warmth. Nor did he feel Vader's shape, quite, as his free hand instinctively roamed. Even without the chest and shoulder plates, what he felt under the swaddling of dark fabric was mostly an irregular surface, the edges of unidentifiable medical devices still busily doing their work. But he felt Vader's _presence,_ physically, shifting under him. Vader's arms, which clutched at his body. Vader's shallow breaths had quickened, and wasn't _that_ an odd, gratifying detail, after growing so used to the implacable sound of a machine.

Maybe someday they could fuck this way. Not now. What they'd done was already such a breathtaking, dangerous intimacy; better to savor it for what it was. But some other visit, when they were more used to this, when the emotions that came alongside it weren't quite so present and volatile. He could kiss Vader like this while Vader worked at him with the Force. He could look into Vader's eyes, knowing Vader felt it, when he came. Vader's face was so vulnerable, so strangely open in its expressions. What would it look like, he wondered, at a moment like that?

Vader's hands dug in at Tarkin's sides, pulling him closer, and Tarkin was reminded again that it was all mechanical servos under those gloves, not flesh. He wondered if Vader could hold him tightly enough to leave bruises, little sets of them leaving the purple-blue impression of fingertips. Easily, he suspected.

"Next time," Vader whispered against him, as Tarkin kissed again up the side of his face, "it will be my turn to choose a location. I will take you back to Mustafar."

"Oh?" Tarkin murmured, distracted.

A second later, his mind caught up with him, and he went entirely still as he realized what Vader meant. What he was offering.

"Oh," he breathed. "Yes."

And the kiss that he planted on Vader's lips, next, was the kiss of a conqueror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> padmé's death is so confusing and nonsensical as written that all the in-universe characters are confused about it too, lalala
> 
> look, the truth of my heart is. that i like bad guys and weird sex and cruelty. but also: and equally much: i am a big softie who just wants them to be happy together. ssh. don't tell.


	11. Golden Sunfish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our villains have one more morning together before needing to head back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanna say I am so blown away by the response to the last couple of chapters. I almost wanted to end it there on that high note? Because after the two unmaskings and the conversation about Padmé - which I'd had pretty well planned in my head - the section regarding this final chapter in my outline is basically just "??? profit."
> 
> But these murder boys still have a morning after to contend with, and some other loose ends to tie up, so here they are again.

Tarkin woke up to rosy early-morning sun and the sound of the waves, earlier than he'd hoped. Tarkin had always been a morning person, and as he aged, the effect had become more pronounced. It was difficult for him to sleep much past dawn, no matter how late he'd stayed up. It was a shame; last night felt like the sort of thing that should have been savored, afterwards, with a long self-indulgent lie-in.

Few of Tarkin's relationships actually involved mornings like that, of course. Not when there was so much else to do. He would let Vader sleep if Vader wanted to; meanwhile he'd enjoy the morning another way.

He got out of bed, washed his face, shaved, and dressed. The sunlight gradually brightened through his bedroom's large windows, and as Tarkin went through his morning routine, he contemplated Vader.

Tarkin had brought Vader to this well-fenced tropical paradise, partly for convenience's sake; he had property here which was suitably private and free from lava. But he had also hoped that Scarif would have a certain effect. That, in a place not designed to remind him that he was a weapon, Vader would relax a bit. He'd have room to experiment. It would be good for him.

But he hadn't predicted accurately what it would _look_ like, when someone like Vader had room to experiment. He'd complained at first, but given opportunity to try new things, he'd tried them all. Given a safe place to express gentle affection, he'd done so, and the backlash of fear and hurt that came with it had taken them both by surprise.

And when Tarkin had let himself be vulnerable - when he'd showed Vader he wasn't always sure of himself either - Vader had not only matched him, but sped astonishingly ahead. He had not done so with particularly good judgment. But he had been brave. And the result, once Tarkin got things back under control, was... good.

There was no doubt left in Tarkin's mind, as he descended the stairs in the sunlight, that Darth Vader loved him. Neither of them had used the word, but there was nothing else to call it, when someone let you in so deeply. And it made Tarkin want - more carefully, perhaps - to respond in kind.

He calmly put together another of those toast-and-fruit breakfasts and a large mug of caf, and went to sit in the common room looking out at the waves. He heard no sign of Vader throughout his meal. After finishing and loading his dishes into the washer, Tarkin paused. He had planned to use this time to pack, but he didn't have many personal effects, as such; his servants would carry out the more general tasks of bringing the beach house back to dormancy, removing the uneaten food and the used sheets and so forth. And another idea had been nagging at him.

Tarkin sat back down at his holodesk and started to page through the records on local wildlife. This time, he didn't look at records from the current year: he went back to the start, when the Empire first surveyed and commandeered Scarif as a research planet.

This information would have been available to Tarkin already, if he'd been paying sufficiently close attention. All the work on Scarif had been part of the Tarkin Initiative from its beginning. But so _many_ things were part of the Tarkin Initiative. By the time the original briefing reached his ears, all those years ago, it wouldn't have contained the details that he was suspicious of now. Merely a quick note that the planet's environment had been thoroughly surveyed, and any modest local threats taken care of - with a link to more detail, should he happen to require it.

He hadn't then, but he required those details now, if only for his own curiosity.

Eventually he did hear Vader milling about upstairs, and then descending to him. He looked up, appreciating the look of Vader's suit in the sunlight. Vader wore it so well; he cut an imposing figure, even here. If something achingly vulnerable still lay hidden behind that mask, well, that could be their secret.

Vader looked Tarkin up and down. "Tell me you are not doing the thing with the fish again."

"Not the way you mean, no. I think I've figured it out."

Even through the mask, Vader's suspicious look was plain. "The discrepancy?"

"Yes. It's very simple; I should have thought of it earlier. The only problem with the holobook is that it's outdated. The cordoning off and pacification of the planet for full use took place after its writing, and it necessitated ecological changes. That's all."

With an efficiency that Eriadu's old hunting parties would have envied, in response to Tarkin's order to ensure that the planet was safe for Imperial activity, the Tarkin Initiative's teams had scoured the planet and removed every creature that posed a threat. The shadow kraken no longer appeared in biological surveys because it was extinct. The bathygnathe, the diamond-scaled grouper, the blixus: all eradicated. Removing apex predators tended to cause other problems, of course, and Scarif's field biology teams were still trying to stabilize what remained, but by the standards of work in progress, it wasn't terrible.

Tarkin felt better about this than he had in days. He'd spent all this time worrying about sea monsters. But the monsters, as ever, ought to have been afraid of  _him._

He felt a flutter of Force-sensation up his spine as he turned to face Vader fully. "Then if that is resolved, you will no longer be distracted."

Tarkin smiled. "Why; did you have something in mind?"

Last night in the meditation chamber, despite all its successes, had ended in mild frustration. They'd both wanted more. Vader had begun to whisper wicked suggestions, things they could do in that chamber with a combination of the Force and their real bodies, even if any full use of Vader's body had to wait for Mustafar. They had all been terrible ideas. Getting Vader used to kissing had already taken so much out of both of them, and that was before one even got into the medical concerns. It couldn't be safely pushed any further. Tarkin had been tempted, though. In the end, only sheer exhaustion had given him the strength to pull away.

So he'd known what Vader would want to do this morning. Likely with even less patience than usual.

Vader pulled him into the air, stilling him and tugging his hands behind his back. The Force swirled up his body, warm and insistent; up his neck, light and menacing; up to his face, and-

And then it was a perfect echo of one of last night's kisses, shallow and feather-light. Tarkin's eyes fluttered shut, forgetting everything. A second later, a thought did come back to him. "I also had another idea, if you're interested. Though it would require more talking."

The Force momentarily vanished. "Tell me."

Tarkin straightened his collar as he looked calmly into Vader's mask. He had been thinking about how Vader had needed Tarkin to admit to weaknesses, first, before dealing his own. He wanted to teach Vader better ways to explore those weaknesses, to think about what he wanted and what the risks might be. But he couldn't teach a behavior to Vader that he wasn't following himself. Tarkin had blundered into one of his own weak spots, their first night here, and he'd avoided mentioning it subsequently, instead of addressing it as he should.

"I've been thinking about our first night here," Tarkin said. "When you gave me orders. I've been thinking about what I might need if we were to try that again."

"That was too much for you, I thought."

Tarkin raised his chin. "Some things are inherently too much, but others only appear to be because we've rushed into them too quickly. Just because that scene didn't work doesn't mean I can never take orders from you again. It was several new and intense things at once, which is not ideal; when we're trying things it's best to do them one at a time. And I'd also never gone into subspace before, so I didn't know what I'd need when I got there. A hazard of not playing submissive often enough, I suppose. It would surprise me less a second time."

"What are you proposing?"

Tarkin took a breath, choosing his words carefully. "I know you have an interest in this form of dominance, and I'm not sure if I can fully meet that need, but I'm still curious. So I'd like to try it again. A more controlled experiment. No roleplay this time, nothing designed to make me fear for my life, and no other major added elements that we didn't negotiate. Just me obeying you, and we'll stay indoors where I'm comfortable and have tea nearby. Is that an offer that interests you?"

"Very much," Vader responded. "Shall we begin?"

"Now will work, if you'd like."

"Then kneel."

Tarkin took a long look at Vader, magnificent in the sunlight, and then he sank to one knee.

*

**_Golden Sunfish._ ** _This gorgeous creature lives in Scarif's shallows. Casual swimmers are often surprised at the friendly curiosity with which the sunfish investigates their activities. Left to its own devices, it will simply approach and observe. But in some regions, the local sunfish have been trained to let themselves be petted and held. While it can lead to an adorable photo opportunity, this activity is dangerous. It wears away at the protective layer of mucus over the fish's soft scales and makes the fish more vulnerable to harm in the future. If you are fortunate enough to see a golden sunfish in the wild, please appreciate its beauty from a distance, just as you would with a bathygnathe or any other fish that posed a danger to you._

*

Vader did not deal well with sexual frustration. It wasn't a physical ailment; his body mostly didn't work that way anymore. But he still had an annoyingly strong sex drive which manifested as pure emotion. When it wasn't satisfied, he became scattered, lost in longings and fantasies that made it difficult to attend to the moment at hand. If he couldn't find a willing partner in that state, his only options were to find a very intense distraction or to meditate it away.

Last night had been agonizing in the best way. And when the worst of the pain had bled away, it had gradually become apparent to Vader, not only as a fact but as a sensory reality, that he was kissing his lover. That his body was in his lover's hands. It wasn't exactly like being with Padmé - which was a mercy, probably - but it was exactly like itself, and that was enough. He'd breathed in the smell of Tarkin's skin, tasted Tarkin's breath, felt the weight of Tarkin shifting atop him. Tarkin's feelings had been plain to him too: tenderness and fascination and growing desire. Vader liked sex - Force sex _was_ real sex, thank you _very_ much, it wasn't a question of reality - but he hadn't done anything like this in far too long, and he'd had the strong urge to make up for lost time. He understood why Tarkin had refused him; it was logical enough; but he'd wanted. He'd _wanted._

The invitations he'd voiced aloud had only been the more realistic half. With sufficient prompting, he might have done anything. He would have torn off his suit entirely, if Tarkin had asked, and dealt with the medical consequences later.

Tarkin had accused Vader of not understanding his own limits, and Tarkin was probably right. Tarkin probably didn't know the half of it. But at least one of the two of them was sensible. Tarkin had some sense of how risky this was. He hadn't abused the power he'd had over Vader in that moment.

And now Tarkin was kneeling to him, in the morning sun, deliberately giving that power back.

"Stay like that," Vader instructed, "until I tell you otherwise, my toy."

Vader felt something wry cross Tarkin's mind. "Toy" was an old endearment, one he'd used when this was just about sex. For a while it had been degrading in a way Tarkin liked. Later, as Tarkin developed a romantic interest, it had started to bother him. They were past all that now, of course. So many new things had happened in these past two days, and it felt good to mix in something familiar.

He began to focus on Tarkin's body, suppressing an odd disappointment. Vader _wanted_ Tarkin. Taking him this way would sate Vader's lust. It would even be a treat, a set of kinks Tarkin didn't usually allow. But it wouldn't be all the things he had wanted last night. Vader had long been used to not being touched. But now he had to get used to being touched sometimes and not other times, and he'd still have to be happy with the other times.

It felt good, though, sensing with Tarkin's senses. Feeling the softness of his clothes on his skin; the sun, through that big window, warming him; the tastes of sweet fruit and rich caf, still lingering on his tongue; the carpeted floor pressing under his knee. Kneeling didn't hurt Tarkin the way it did for Vader, and Vader liked the view.

"You will address me as Lord Vader."

"Yes, Lord Vader."

"Now tell me who _you_ are."

"I'm the governor of the Outer Rim, Lord Vader," Tarkin said. "I'm a decorated war hero. The Empire's entire philosophy, when it comes to the use of force, is named after me. I'm the scion of the most powerful family on Eriadu and I'm one of the Emperor's most trusted officials. In certain contexts, I outrank _you._  I own the very planet that we stand on. And I'm yours."

Vader absorbed that answer, amused. It held all of Tarkin's usual arrogance. Just as Tarkin had warned: he'd follow instructions, but he wouldn't diminish himself. But it was also an answer given with real affection, with trust.

Tarkin had not yet dared to use the word, but it was difficult to keep emotions hidden from Vader. He'd known for certain, ever since Mustafar, that Tarkin loved him.

He took a hold of Tarkin's head lightly with the Force, tilted it back. It was less about pain and more about making him feel manhandled. "Yes," Vader purred. "You are a  _high-quality_ toy."

Tarkin gazed back up at him. "What do you think you'll do with me?"

There was a sense in which it was obvious, and a sense in which he genuinely didn't know. For all his talk about being careful, Tarkin was the one who'd sprung this scene idea on him at the last second. Maybe that was good; maybe he was starting to loosen up a bit. There had been a hint of that in his feelings already, a sense that, after how vulnerable Vader had become, Tarkin wanted to soften himself a bit too.

"You said that you will not fawn on me," said Vader. "Yet you kneel to me. You call yourself mine."

"You asked, Lord Vader," Tarkin responded, unruffled.

"Give me an example of something you will _not_ do."

"I don't beg," Tarkin said immediately. He had at least halfway begged, at the end of their scene the other night, but then that might be part of why that scene had been too much. "And I don't - you've seen the type of submissive, Lord Vader, the ones who bow and scrape and debase themselves on their own initiative. The ones who crawl to your feet just to get your attention. That's not me."

"But you would crawl if I ordered it," Vader guessed. He thought he was beginning to understand. "You would crawl very correctly, to the precise location I asked, with every shred of dignity you possessed. Wouldn't you?"

"I believe so, Lord Vader." For once, he looked uncertain. Vader was reminded of how inexperienced Tarkin was, all things considered, at submitting. He liked to play the role of the kink elder who knew the right way to go about everything, and in many ways that wasn't wrong. He'd played dominant enough to know the common pitfalls and safety concerns. He'd taken pain before, enough of it to know what he liked. He'd experimented with other things. But until Vader, he'd never had a partner like _this,_  someone he wanted to play submissive to again and again. He'd never fallen in love with a dominant. What he felt over time, as this went on, might surprise them both.

Vader took a step back and stood at ease, his feet slightly apart. "Crawl to me. Kiss my feet."

To his astonished delight, Tarkin did so. He Vader wouldn't have given the order if he hadn't been fairly sure Tarkin would follow it, but it astounded him anyway, just as it had two nights ago, when Tarkin submerged himself under the waves. Vader wondered if he would ever get used to it, the particular thrill of watching a stubborn defiant thing like Tarkin _choose_ to obey. He hoped not.

Tarkin  maneuvered efficiently from his genuflection to his hands and knees, then  crawled to Vader over the blue-gray carpet, limbs straight, back flat. He paused at Vader's feet, then crouched and delivered a short kiss to the top of each boot, closed-mouthed and formal.

"Good," said Vader. That was an understatement. He wanted Tarkin very badly; he half-wanted to pounce him _now,_ but that would cut the scene too short. "Stand. Strip yourself."

He watched hungrily as Tarkin undressed. He already felt that body in its every detail, but there a thrill in watching it revealed to his gaze, bared to him in more ways than one. He felt the usual small churn of self-consciousness. Vader knew that Tarkin didn't consider himself attractive; people who knew they looked good moved differently, thought differently, at times like this. Tarkin knew how to tease Vader by delaying sensory pleasure, but he'd never seemed to consider that Vader's sight was a sense, too.

Vader was the ugly one here, of course. Tarkin's  insecurity about his body didn't even go in the same category as Vader's. But Vader might still amuse himself, playing with it.

"Fold your clothes properly," Vader instructed. "Leave them on that chair. Then stand for me by the window, in the sunlight. I must inspect what has been given to me."

Tarkin left his clothes in precise folded squares, and he walked to stand at attention, side-on to the room's large window, straight and formal in profile against the endless blue. Vader let him wait there a moment or two, let him stew in anticipation, before approaching.

Vader's mask compensated for the glare as it always did, but there was still an extra clarity to things viewed in bright light, and the mask's eye-lenses could be set to take advantage of this. If he bent close enough, he would see Tarkin's very pores; the veins under his skin; the small scars he'd accrued over many years, the fine individual hairs. He could look into Tarkin's eyes, if he wished, and see every convolution of the blue-gray irises.

But instead of performing a proper inspection, on impulse, he found himself reaching with a gloved hand to Tarkin's face. Tracing with his fingers, ever so lightly, across Tarkin's bare forehead and down his cheek.

It felt so different, Vader doing this to Tarkin. Tarkin's skin didn't ache where it was touched. Tarkin didn't feel like he'd been pried all the way open and his very organs exposed. Being caressed was a pleasant thing that he took mostly for granted, like being able to sit in the sun and eat fruit. Vader saw him blink, though, and felt a shadow of recognition pass behind his eyes.

He tried it again, adding a Force-sensation under his fingers. An ache like his own, the flinch of damaged and chronically understimulated nerves. Tarkin frowned, thoughtful. Vader could tell he guessed what Vader was trying to do; he could feel a small twinge of _pity,_ which was not what he'd wanted at all; but even this was not enough. Tarkin still wasn't feeling what Vader had felt last night. Vader could reproduce the pain, but not the awful touch-starved longing that had come with it, twined so closely with the physical sensation that they felt like one united thing.

Vader had put an emotion into Tarkin's head once by accident, but he wasn't sure he could do it on purpose, with the kind of finesse he would need. And Tarkin wouldn't consent to that without a long negotiation. Vader wanted-

He grabbed Tarkin with both hands and shoved him physically back against the window.

"What-?" Tarkin said, unresisting but startled.

Vader ignored the question and pawed at him, not with the Force, not with slaps or with the barehanded techniques he'd seen other dominants use. Just his gloved hands in a fever of grabbing, clenching, so forcefully that he felt bruising pain where the backs of Tarkin's shoulders pressed against the glass. It didn't take much effort; Vader's prosthetic arms and hands were strong. He pushed harder. Tarkin tried to move - Vader didn't know if he was playing at struggling, or if it was a simple posture correction, but he didn't care. He locked the Force into place, pinning Tarkin's limbs. And if he was going to hold him in place anyway, he might as well go the whole way. He pulled Tarkin's arms and legs out into a spread-eagle and pushed him further up the glass, hanging in midair like a perverse work of art.

He didn't know what he was doing. He wanted to press close, closer than his suit allowed. He wanted Tarkin to _feel_ him, independently of the Force, more deeply than it was possible for Tarkin to feel anything. Under the skin, down to bone. He scrabbled at Tarkin, his shoulders and chest, his hips, letting deep Force-bursts of pain bloom under the pressure of his hands. He put strength into it. He felt Tarkin's ribs creak, between the window and the weight of him.

He had touched Tarkin with his hands before and it hadn't been like this. Tarkin and others had touched _him,_ through his suit, and it hadn't been like this. It had been abstract. He'd thought only of his immediate sensations, which honestly weren't much, and of what his partner felt. He hadn't thought about the fullness of his body taking up space, and what it ought to be able to do.

This pain was no worse than many others he'd given to Tarkin before, but Tarkin's brow furrowed in concern. "Lord Vader... Are you all _right?_ "

"I have never been all right," Vader said thickly. "I will never be all right. Do not ask that of me."

Tarkin's expression became an outright frown of disapproval. "All I meant was-"

"I know what you meant."

With an effort, he checked himself. He remembered how Tarkin had kept him anchored last night. Vader had concentrated so hard on staying in the moment, enduring; it was his own effort that had accomplished that, above all. But Tarkin had known what to do to make it easier. He'd held out his voice like a homing beacon, and Vader had followed.

"Tell me again," Vader demanded, his hand between Tarkin's collarbones, two fingers reaching to the hollow of his throat. "Tell me what you are."

Tarkin looked at him carefully. It seemed to be dawning on him what was happening here. "I own this beach house, for one thing. I've worked with you for eighteen years. I brought you here so you'd let your guard down, and I'm yours. Stay with me, Vader."

"Mine," Vader echoed. Maybe that was the solution. Maybe if they loved each other enough it wouldn't matter that it felt like this. "Say it again."

"I'm yours, Vader. And you're mine."

They'd both abandoned the pretense of following orders at this point. He'd dropped the "Lord Vader" title, and Vader didn't actually care. "Swear to it," he demanded.

But that was the wrong demand; it brought Tarkin up short.

"Vader," he said coldly. "I am under no circumstances making binding oaths to you in the _middle of a scene._ Put me down and pull yourself together."

Vader considered pressing a little harder, putting some real effort in. Breaking his bones. But Tarkin wouldn't forgive him for that, probably.

He let go.

Tarkin dropped to the floor, stumbling slightly, and took a few steps away from the window. A few seconds later, the window shattered of its own accord. The whole pane of tempered glass went to tiny pieces all at once, floor to ceiling. The sea breeze blew in intrusively - the smell of the salt air, startling Vader more through Tarkin's senses than his own - over a sudden enormous scattering of transparent sharp things. The security panel started that beeping noise again, as it had done two nights ago.

Tarkin hastily scrambled further away. Turning to the wall, he pressed a few keys on the nearest panel; the beeping stopped. A mouse droid trundled into the room a moment later and began to sweep up the glass from the floor. That done, he turned back to Vader and irately crossed his arms.

"When I return home," he said coldly, "I'm sending you an invoice for repairs. The lock on the front door, and this, as well as any damages from insects, wildlife, moisture, salt, or sentient miscreants who might enter the house by this method before the window can be replaced. _Really,_ Vader. You make a terrible guest."

Vader brushed himself off, more with the Force than with his hands: a quick burst which shook anything small or sharp away from his armor. Then he took a few steps and heavily sat. Vader broke everything, of course, in more than one sense. He wasn't sure if he was done breaking things.

He listened to his breath, trying to snap himself out of this. He hadn't bothered to pull his senses out of Tarkin's body, and he felt Tarkin doing roughly the same thing, keeping quiet and counting in an effort to still his own anger. He would have been much harsher, Vader knew, if that anger hadn't been tempered by genuine concern. Tarkin knew something had distressed Vader badly, and although he didn't consider that an _excuse,_ he did want to get to the bottom of it.

Vader's breath wasn't doing much for him. It kept him anchored in his own body, which was useless and had to have air pumped in and out of it all the time. It was not the kind of body he needed for mornings like this. Not the kind that could twine itself around and through Tarkin's the way he wanted, not even if they went all the way to Mustafar and took his suit off. Not really.

He listened to Tarkin's breath instead, then. It was more irregular and took more concentration to focus on, and it didn't keep forcing him back into awareness of the thing that upset him.

At last Tarkin relaxed, slightly and begrudgingly. "I'd spend longer being cold to you, except that we both need to leave soon, and I'd rather not end a visit like this on a sour note. Can you tell me what just happened?"

Vader was paying very close attention to Tarkin, feeling every shift of his weight and twitch of his face, but with his actual eyes he didn't look up from the floor. "I do not know."

"If anything, you've always been too reticent about using your hands. Something's changed in how you think about your body, hasn't it?"

"I couldn't-" Vader started, and broke off.

"Couldn't what?"

"I cannot say this in a way that will make sense to you."

"Then tell me the version that doesn't make sense and we'll puzzle it out."

"I could not make it feel for you the way it does for me."

Tarkin raised an eyebrow. "I'm fairly sure all I touched last night was your face, Vader. I... understood that part, but not the rest. Unless - was it my weight on you that bothered you? I know I had my hand on your chest for a while, over top of the suit's inner layer. Was that too much?"

"No. You are thinking too literally. I wanted-"

Tarkin had touched him last night lightly, gently, but it had gone to his core. It had changed him. Tarkin's mind was solid steel, and Vader didn't know how to do something like that back. He didn't even know if it was _fair_ to want to do that, to touch Tarkin in a way that would shake everything he thought he knew. Maybe even sadists weren't supposed to want things like that.

"You wanted _something,_ clearly. Certainly more than you wanted what I thought we'd agreed to."

Vader didn't know what to do, except go right on saying the version that didn't make sense. "I wanted to touch you so hard it would go all the way through you. With my hands, not the Force. I wanted to _truly_ touch you, and have it go under your skin, to your bones, to your core."

Tarkin blinked, digesting that, and then he cocked his head. He looked Vader over with an odd, intrigued, speculative expression. And something else slid in alongside it, a glint of possessive mischief.

"Vader," he said, "are you telling me you wanted to be inside me?"

Vader was brought up short. That hadn't been what he was thinking, not really. But he saw why Tarkin would make the connection. Vader remembered being very young, feeling attraction without knowing what it was or what to do with it, knowing only that he'd seen someone he wanted to press close to in ways that didn't make any sense. Most people had memories like that, probably. Nothing could ever be as profound for Tarkin as what Vader had gone through last night. But at least sex would get into him, under his skin. It would twine sensation and emotion together until they felt like the same damn thing. That was, at least, a part of what Vader had wanted. And they'd both woken up this morning wanting it badly enough.

"Not only that," he said. "I do not know. Yes. Maybe."

Tarkin let out a breath, amused enough to let go of his anger for now. "We're both a bit pent up right now, aren't we? Let's go up to my room, and I'll show you something more productive you can do with those hands. Would that interest you?"

"Yes," said Vader.

It interested him. He didn't think it would solve anything except mutual lust, but if Tarkin wanted to try it that way, they could. Vader was very  out of practice at using his hands for sex; he was pretty sure he wouldn't be any good at it anymore. At least the challenge would distract him.

They made their way upstairs. Vader had seen Tarkin's room before, in passing, on his way through the hall or when he'd woken Tarkin at night. It was blue-gray like everything else and so tidy that it might pass for unoccupied. Tarkin seemed comfortable there, and confident, now that he had a plan. "You said lying supine is comfortable for you, yes?"

"Yes," said Vader.

Tarkin patted the bedspread. "Lie that way. I'm just going to get supplies."

Vader lay down, hearing the bed creak under his weight. It refrained from breaking, for now. Tarkin had opened his closet and was rummaging through a couple of drawers. After a minute he drew out the antiseptic tissues and lubricant that Vader remembered from last night, and a small pack of sterile medical gloves. He set those things on the bedside table, and then he climbed up to crouch on top of Vader. He didn't sit down as he had in the meditation chamber; with Vader's full suit on, there were a few too many jagged and expensive-looking parts in the way, like the indicator panel at his abdomen. So Tarkin stayed on his hands and knees, looking down at Vader possessively. Vader liked the way Tarkin looked at him. He'd always liked that.

"How are you feeling?" said Tarkin.

"Interested. Nervous. Out of practice."

For some reason Tarkin seemed to like that answer. _How are you feeling_ was the same question he'd asked repeatedly last night, while he played dominant. Vader was not interested in submitting this morning, and he'd stop Tarkin if he tried to bend things that way. But Tarkin had asked it again, in the meditation chamber, while he touched Vader's face - an awful tenderness that had nothing to do with dominance. It wasn't an inherently kinky question. Maybe it was a question Tarkin felt drawn to whenever he wasn't submitting.

Neither of them, he noted, had suggested going back to the meditation chamber. Vader wanted that kind of raw agonized closeness again, but not now. The territory would be familiar if they did it a second time, and that would make it a little less intense, but not by much. He didn't want it now, with his emotions already dialed up to levels he could hardly stand. He wanted to fuck. He wanted relief.

"That's what I thought," said Tarkin. "Tell me, when was the last time-" He broke off, seeming to remember how dangerous a question that could be with Vader. "No, actually, don't tell me that. You haven't at all in the last few years, though have you? You've only used the Force, not your real hands."

"That is true," said Vader, feeling embarrassed to admit it. The Force could do so much more than his real hands. It was his specialty, the thing people sought him out for. That was why he'd only used the Force with his submissives all these years: it was a better, more powerful, sexier thing to use. That was definitely the reason. It wasn't at all because he was embarrassed by the limits of his real body, or afraid.

Tarkin could always tell, it seemed, when Vader was lying to himself.

"It'll come back to you quickly enough, I'm sure," Tarkin said. "Let's start with something simple. You remember the places on my body I like. Don't worry about pain or anything elaborate, or even saying words for now. Just touch me like you're warming me up."

Vader obeyed, reaching up to stroke Tarkin's skin with his hands, starting at the collarbones and working his way down. Touching Tarkin this way didn't enrage him, like his attempt at contact a few minutes ago. He had a task now that made sense, a specific goal. It was even faintly pleasant: Tarkin liked being touched, and Vader was happy to soak up the sensation.

It was awkward, though. He was used to being able to create whole kaleidoscopes of sensation, constantly shifting to match what felt good in the moment. His hands were entirely inadequate to that task. They could only move in certain ways. They could only be in a limited number of places at once. They only had one texture.

He could vary the amount of pressure, at least. He tried that. Feather-light caresses and firm grasps. He dug his fingers into Tarkin's hip, so hard it hurt; Tarkin had liked that, being held tightly in Vader's excitement last night. He deliberately relaxed his grip, resisting the urge to try to dig all the way to bone, and ran his fingertips softly over the same place, now that it was sensitized. He liked how that felt.

Tarkin had half-closed his eyes, relaxing into Vader's touch. That in itself was fascinating, the subtle ways his body moved when it was free to do so. "There, see? You're getting the hang of it. You can use the individual fingers, too, if you'd like. Or you can use the whole arm." He smiled with mischief. "You can hold me."

Vader tried that, then. He pulled Tarkin closer, remembering how he'd done it in the meditation chamber, how Tarkin had done something similar in reverse, once, on Mustafar. Tarkin crouched lower, letting one of Vader's arms wrap around him, the hand settling at his shoulder blade. With his other hand he explored up Tarkin's side, to his chest and back down. He tried using just one finger; he didn't like that as much as the whole hand, but it gave him other ideas. He tried moving multiple fingers independently, tracing intricate patterns over Tarkin's skin, and that was pleasant.

He got lost in that sensation for a while, roving up and down, feeling Tarkin's skin warm and his pulse begin to quicken. Playing silently with the range of things his hands could do, gradually lower, from the sensitive part of Tarkin's chest to his ribs, his abdomen. The small tuft of graying hair between his thighs, teasing closer to the cock Vader was so familiar with, that bright locus of sensation that he wanted for himself, gradually hardening.

"That's very good," Tarkin informed him, and then he straightened slightly, sitting up and letting Vader's arm around him fall. "Let me see your hands a moment, would you?"

Vader reluctantly stopped what he'd been doing and held out both hands palm up. "Is there a problem?"

"Not at all. Just - safety considerations. We have to actually think about that, if we're not using the Force." He took Vader's hands and idly stroked them, his thumbs over Vader's palms; Vader's gloved hands weren't as sensitive as most people's, but they could feel the contact well enough. "I thought at first that these were leather, but they're something else, aren't they?"

"Mandalorian ironweave," Vader said. "At the surface." Underneath was a complex arrangement of servos, joints and wiring. The gloves could in theory be removed, and his hands would still function, although they'd look more obviously artificial that way. But it was more complicated than removing a normal glove from a normal hand. More complicated, even, than taking off the whole prosthetic arm.

Tarkin peered at the gloves with something like approval. "Do you know off the top of your head if that's easier to sterilize than leather?"

"No," Vader admitted. His droids took care of cleaning his armor when he was out of it. He'd never asked about the specifics.

"Well, we'll err on the side of safety, then.  I am absolutely positive you have slaughtered people while wearing these. And we're going to get a bit messy here in a moment, so I'd like you to put on a pair of these."

He reached for the bedside table, which was close enough that he could do it without fully breaking contact, and handed Vader a pair of those medical gloves. Vader looked at them, feeling mildly insulted somehow. "When I slaughter people, I do not use my hands."

"I'm sure. Humor me."

Vader reluctantly pulled the medical gloves on over his regular ones. The material was flexible and very thin, and it didn't seem to impede his range of motion. The texture would be different, though, and that bothered him. He'd only just gotten used to the texture his hands had without them. He stroked Tarkin's abdomen experimentally. It wasn't as bad as he'd feared, but he still preferred the other way. "This is what you want to feel inside you?"

"Well, we're getting to that. It'll feel better with this." Tarkin picked up the vial of lubricant next and offered it over, dripping a bit over Vader's fingertips. "You remember how I used this on myself last night, I'm sure. Try it that way."

Vader was still unsure about this, but he wasn't going to refuse an invitation to touch Tarkin's cock. He reached down there and tried it, hesitantly at first, running his coated fingertips along its length. It felt _good,_ to his surprise. A slick smooth pressure, without any of the offputting qualities that the medical gloves had when dry. He flexed his hand a moment, spreading the lubricant over more of it, and then he tried again with a firmer grip. He was rewarded with a small, animalistic sound from Tarkin's throat, and with a bright spark of real pleasure: he'd been even hungrier for it than he thought, the feel of being stroked and gratified like this. He remembered just where Tarkin's nerve endings gathered most densely, the range of speed and pressure he liked. It took only a minute of fumbling to work out how best to accomplish those things with his hand, and even the fumbling felt good.

Tarkin swung down to crouch over him again, his hips twitching with pleasure; Vader could feel him holding back the urge to thrust mindlessly into Vader's hand. He tightened his grip further. There was a strange emotion in Tarkin's mind, a sort of mentally absorbed thrill. It usually took more talking and better scene-crafting to get something like that from him. It was the simple newness of the activity that pleased him now, Vader supposed. If they did it again later they'd start needing to add more.

It had been stealing over him all this weekend, the conviction that there _was_ more to add. There were whole worlds to explore within a connection like theirs; they might never find the end. Touching Tarkin this way wasn't inherently more intense than touching him with the Force, nor inherently more intimate, at least not for Vader. But it was _different_ and Vader had needed that difference today. He'd needed to get settled again in his body.

"Tell me something, Vader," Tarkin murmured. "You've never done this before, have you? Not with this pair of hands. Not with another man."

"Not in those ways," Vader agreed. He'd Force-fucked plenty of men, but not with his hands. He'd thought Tarkin meant it as a criticism, after all of his fumbling, but when he answered that way, Tarkin felt pleased.  Tarkin liked having something no one else had.

"I like this," said Tarkin. " Would you still like to be inside me?"

"Yes," Vader answered immediately.

Tarkin picked up the lubricant again. "It will take more of a warm-up, compared to when you use the Force," he warned. "Start slow and use a lot of this. Use more than you think you'll need."

"Are you asking me to be gentle again?" said Vader, as he slicked his fingers. This really was messy. He was glad Tarkin had made him use the medical gloves.

Tarkin smirked. "You seemed to enjoy that when I last asked."

With one hand still working idly at Tarkin's cock, Vader slipped the other back to his hole. He stroked experimentally around its edge, trying to figure out how this was going to work. It didn't feel like there was much room to fit a finger in. When he used the Force he didn't have to worry about that; he could make a sensation that flowed easily over the skin and inside, frictionless, taking only infinitesimal space.

It took several long minutes and even more of the lubricant, finding the outer edges of the nerves he liked to use for this, figuring out all over again how they liked to be touched. But with some patient encouragement he managed to ease Tarkin open just enough, until with one gloved fingertip he slipped inside.

Tarkin breathed in sharply, shutting his eyes. Vader stayed like that a moment, just absorbing how it felt. It was definitely not the same as the Force. He wanted more. He worked further in. Vader's gloved fingers were thick, and even a single one, well-lubricated and moving gently, was more intense than what he normally did here. He felt the slight burn of Tarkin's flesh as it parted around him, but Tarkin seemed to like that feeling, so he kept going. He felt the way Tarkin's cock responded under his other hand, the way one sensation intensified the other.

Tarkin's eyes fluttered open again, in an expression of hazed, affectionate hunger. "How does that feel?" he asked - a question Vader had to puzzle over for a moment, because _obviously_ it felt to Vader the same way it did to Tarkin, that was how it _worked_ when they fucked, it hadn't changed. "Is this what you wanted?"

It wasn't quite, but it was good enough. The memory of what Vader had wanted, the awful need to break Tarkin apart from the inside, was already fading. Maybe it _had_ been the same instinct, in a distorted form, the need to put his hands on and through Tarkin in a way he couldn't possibly ignore. Or maybe this was just a sufficiently good distraction.

"You are what I wanted," Vader replied.

Tarkin gave a small gratified purr. Vader started to move in him more vigorously, trying to recall the terrain. He thought he remembered where the prostate was, but it took a few tries to work out how to get there with his hand. He curled his finger inward a couple of times, unsuccessfully, feeling only a burn and a frustrating, almost-there flicker. On the third try he got it right, and the sensation almost startled him into motionless, as Tarkin moaned in pleasure above him. He remembered _this_ feeling, at least. He knew how to keep going from here.

"Vader, I..." Tarkin said after a moment, breathlessly but with an odd reticence. "I want to touch you back. Can I-?"

It was a silly question. This wasn't the meditation chamber; Tarkin wasn't capable of hurting him here. "Do as you wish."

"Where do you have the most sensation, when the suit is on?"

"My hands are occupied. Aside from them-" Vader hesitated; it was a good question, a generous question, but he had to think about it. Submissives touched him through his armor sometimes, if he allowed it, or if they were unrestrained and too impulsive for their own good. Very few other things ever did, and very little of it felt like anything notable. He wasn't exactly a connoisseur of being touched.

"Try my upper arms," he suggested. They were organic and relatively unencumbered by armor or medical equipment, just many layers of thick fabric and the self-cleaning, self-sealing, temperature-regulating materials that went with it. "And - thighs."

He felt shy about that last one. He remembered how Tarkin had fixated briefly on his legs last night. In the heat of excitement in the meditation chamber, he'd promised Tarkin they were going back to Mustafar, where Vader could remove his armor fully. Tarkin was going to get to _see_ all that. It had seemed like a good promise to make at the time. He... probably wouldn't mind it, any more than he'd minded Vader's face. Probably.

Tarkin reached out with one hand and grasped Vader's upper arm. It felt like nothing much. Vague pressure, that was all. The inadequacy of it almost made him angry again. If Tarkin asked him in that possessive, self-satisfied tone how it felt, Vader might have lost the entire mood. But Tarkin was smarter than that. He stayed quiet, apart from his panting breath, as he focused on the feel of Vader's arm under his hand, as he stroked thoughtfully down. This was something Tarkin was doing for himself, for the feeling of having Vader's body in his grasp, not for Vader. He wished it was for Vader, maybe; that was his natural tendency, wanting to make his partner feel him. But they both knew better.

The feel of Tarkin's cock in his hand, hard and slick and bright with pleasure - _that,_ paradoxically, was for Vader. The feeling of Vader's gloved finger deep inside him, pressing against nerves that sparked their way deeper still. Vader focused harder on those parts, and his almost-anger drained away. This was good. He could have this.

Tarkin reached down and stroked Vader's leg, as he had Vader's arm, and that did feel like something, if only because it slightly hurt. Vader wondered if he should complain, but it didn't seem worth the effort. Slightly hurting was better than feeling nothing at all.

Maybe that was what it would be like, on Mustafar. Tarkin would hesitantly touch him. It would hurt the way touching Vader's face had hurt, and Vader would finally know what it was like to enjoy his own body's pain.

He wanted this. He wanted Tarkin on top of him, taking pleasure from his hands like it mattered that those hands were Vader's. Tarkin touching him, like he was a person worth touching.

"You're mine, Vader," Tarkin breathed. Vader could feel how near this was to ending, how little he would need to do to push it over the edge. "All of you. Whether you're in your armor or not, you're all mine."

Vader curled his finger in again, feeling nerves all over Tarkin's body shiver in response, the whole of him cradled in something as simple as a pair of hands. "And you are mine."

Tarkin was panting in earnest now, scarcely getting the words out. "Vader, I- I'm going to-"

Vader belatedly considered Tarkin's position atop him and the delicate electronics nearby, and he telekinetically snatched up a handful of tissues from the bedside table. Tarkin let go of Vader's thigh to grab them and hold them where they'd catch most of the mess.

That done, Vader tightened his fist around the length of Tarkin's cock, and curled that finger on his other hand again in the way he liked. Tarkin came with a throaty cry, showing his teeth, and Vader lost himself entirely in the shared feeling. Force, he'd _needed_ this after last night, the way all the tension and anguish poured from him in one long burst of ecstasy. He'd needed so badly to feel this.

At last Tarkin's body slumped partway, relaxing. Vader's body had relaxed a bit, too - that came to his awareness more easily than normal, the state of his own perpetually-unhappy muscles and nerves. He felt as comfortable as he ever got with his armor on. He could lie like this a while longer, if Tarkin wanted.

"I liked that," said Tarkin. "Did you?"

"Yes," Vader said.

He withdrew his hands and peeled the medical gloves off, levitating them into the nearest trash. Tarkin plucked another tissue from the pack on the bedside table and started looking for any spots of mess that had escaped. There wasn't much, and soon even Tarkin had to admit that he was fussing about cleanliness for the sake of fussing. He tossed all the tissues out after the gloves, and then looked down at Vader, an odd, wistful expression on his face.

"Forgive me for this," he said. "There's something I've always wanted to do."

And then, without any more fear or self-consciousness than an animal settling into its den, Tarkin stretched out his body to its full length and lay down at Vader's side. He pillowed his head on the relative softness of Vader's upper arm, where he'd touched earlier; his chest and torso leaned lightly against the uneven hard surface of Vader's armor. A hand went around him, draping lazily above the indicator panel, and rested.

Tarkin was... cuddling him. Vader had no idea how to respond.

He lay there blankly like that for a minute. He could feel Tarkin sleepily enjoying it. Two nights ago, even a hesitant embrace had felt like a little too much. An extravagance Vader didn't deserve, a promise of tenderness he couldn't fulfil. Something he'd only done, in the first place, because Tarkin had been shaking and disoriented and had _needed_ it.

But when a proper Sith gave in to an emotion, there _was_ no "too much." Words like _deserve_ and _promise_ did not enter into it. A Sith Lord who truly wanted something was meant to take it all.

Tarkin talked about being careful, but this morning _he_ was the one who'd pressed forward into new things while emotions ran high. Tarkin hid it better, he rationalized it, but both of them were monsters in that way, razor-toothed and hungry for everything they could hold. When they couldn't quite hold it, ravenous as they were, they reached out blindly for it anyway.

Without moving his upper arm where Tarkin's head was resting, Vader cautiously raised that hand to wrap around him in return.

They were interrupted, at that point, by a pinging sound from the comms panel in the next room. Tarkin gave a dismayed groan and rolled out of the bed. He straightened quickly as he strode out of the room in that direction.

Vader could hear as he opened the call - in audio-only mode, no doubt - and carried on his half of the conversation. The voice on the other side was a clipped, unexcited, military-sounding man whose exact words were muffled by the electronics. "Understood, thank you. We'll be out on schedule. There's been some cosmetic damage to the house, but no one is harmed; don't let it alarm you. Dismissed."

Vader reluctantly pushed himself upright, understanding the mundane and disappointing thing that this was. Tarkin strode back in a moment later. "That was my shuttle telling me they're on their way. I imagine yours isn't far off, either. I should dress."

"Mine will arrive on schedule," Vader agreed. He glanced at the clock. It was closer to the agreed-on time than he'd thought. Vader's shuttle crew didn't bother to comm ahead unless there was some problem. They arrived when told to or faced the consequences; if some change of plans delayed Vader, they sat and waited for him.

Tarkin didn't turn to his dresser immediately. He gave Vader a long, wistful look, and for a moment Vader thought he was working up his nerve to make some statement of breathtaking tenderness.

What he said instead was, "Try not to have another month-long mission, if you can help it. I'll clear another spot in my schedule as soon as I can."

Vader's schedule depended almost entirely on Palpatine's whims, but he didn't want to dwell on that right now. "I will, as well."

"You know you can comm me any time. I might be in a meeting and you might get an aide, but I'll see it and reply when I can. They already know any message from you is to be patched through to me directly."

"You might also get a servant," Vader warned.

"Aides aren't servants, technically, but that's fine." Tarkin turned fully to the dresser, opened it, and found it empty. He sighed. "I left my last set of clean clothes downstairs with all that glass, didn't I?"

Vader gave him an embarrassed look. Behind the mask, to Tarkin's senses, it probably resembled a regular look. "If that droid is competent, it will have already removed any debris."

"Well, I'd best go down to assess the damage before anyone else arrives. I'll be back up to say goodbye before I leave, if you haven't come down by then."

He turned on his heel and left, having returned to his usual, task-oriented self.

Vader didn't have much packing to do. He had that one droid with the empty medicine box, and that was about it. He didn't want to get up yet, even just to lounge around waiting for his shuttle. Tarkin had wanted to give Vader a space to relax and try things differently. It had worked better than Vader had believed it would. But when he left this space, all the demands of the rest of the galaxy would come flooding back in. His work. His missions. His master. He didn't want to go, not knowing when they'd have a time like this again.

When he returned to his fortress, he knew, he'd spend the evening in meditation. He'd reconnect to the raging molten rock under Mustafar's surface, and to the pitiless vacuum above. And some small part of his mind would also, secretly, return here. To this absurd holo-card landscape, with its palm trees and sunlight. To Tarkin's innocuous vacation home, enclosing him like someone who deserved to be there. To fingertips on his bare face in the darkness. To his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over the course of this fic I've had a couple people comment that they subscribed to "Holding Vader's Leash" but hadn't realized when this new one started, or that they regretted they could not subscribe to a series, and a couple people have expressed great interest in how the relationship is going to continue developing from here. So in case that's you, I would like to remind everybody that on AO3 you can, in fact, subscribe to a series! If you click on the series name ("Playing With Fire") and click the Subscribe button there then you'll be notified not only of the current fic but of any sequels that exist in the future. You can also subscribe to an author. Absolutely no pressure but if you want to be the first to know when more fic happens, one of those methods is the way.
> 
> I'm being excessively cagey/hesitant about promising sequels, for a lot of reasons; I honestly don't know what I'm going to do next or how long it will be. But I'll be astonished if I don't eventually return to this pairing and this series. I'm having so much fun. All of you who've commented or left kudos have made it even more fun, thank you <3 <3


End file.
